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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27028549">i'm just playing games (i know that's plastic love)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/spanish_sahara/pseuds/spanish_sahara'>spanish_sahara</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>plastic love [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Persona 5, Persona Series</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Akira and Goro's Big Fat Gay Adventure in Amsterdam, F/M, Infidelity, M/M, Pining, Post-Persona 5: The Royal, Where in the World is Akechi Goro?</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 17:14:22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>35,891</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27028549</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/spanish_sahara/pseuds/spanish_sahara</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>“I don’t know how else to read it when he says, <em>Don’t text me back.</em>”</p>
  <p>Akira thinks. “No, this is very standard of Akechi,” he says, shaking his head. “He’ll say one thing, but then he actually wants you to do another. Like that one time we were talking and he said that he couldn’t possibly bore me with his musings on Hegel and then I asked him anyways and he spent the rest of the night ranting about absolute idealism and dialectical thinking and the liminal spaces between self-identity and perception.”</p>
</blockquote>For Kurusu Akira, stalking your former enemy slash rival—who may or may not haunt your dreams like a waking ghost—is a perfectly normal thing to do to cope with the impending nightmare that is your future. (Morgana disagrees.)
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist, Minor Kurusu Akira/Togo Hifumi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>plastic love [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1973140</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>103</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>342</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. homecoming</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>
  <b>(cw: brief mention of sexual content)</b>
</p><p> </p><p>this is a sequel to my other fic, “dance to the plastic beat (another morning comes),” which is written in goro’s POV. i would definitely recommend reading it as it provides the context/emotional subtext behind this piece!</p><p>this picks up right after goro sends that last text message, and is entirely from akira's POV now. you can also check out <a href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0nhSxYq3JAAGkc0Sl4jjfP?si=jcIkYanpQIaPANVvtqBw8g"><strong>my akira playlist on spotify</strong></a> if you'd like to arduously pine with him. enjoy (:</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>On the morning of March 20, 2017, Akira peers around at the city that has become his home for the last year, and thinks that he’s going to really, really miss Tokyo.</p><p>He’s going to miss Leblanc. He’s going to miss the scent of coffee and curry when he wakes up. He’s going to miss every single dusty corner of that attic, and the stiff couch his friends would take turns napping on, and Ukki-kun the houseplant. He’s going to miss shoveling an obscene amount of food into his mouth at Big Bang Burger, trying and failing to charm the maids at Akihabara’s cafes, mixing drinks and saying all the right things to Crossroads’ lonely patrons. He’s going to miss even the mundane, slow parts of the city—the tumble and rumble of his clothes in old laundromats, the never-ending cluster of crowds in train compartments, the way his whole body and heart would ache whenever he returned from hours of just aimlessly walking around Shibuya, headphones in his ears, head tilted up, music rising like a crescendo around him.</p><p>But more than that, he’s going to miss the people he’s met—people who let a stupid, joke-cracking kid like him into their lives. He’s going to miss Kawakami and the tired slant of her eyes, the kindnesses she kept buried beneath her exhaustion, just like Ohya. He’s going to miss feeling the adrenaline of fear strike his heart every time he talked to Takemi or Iwai. He’s going to miss learning from Shinya and Yoshida, trying to decipher Chihaya’s riddles, helping Mishima in all his fumbling clumsiness. He’s going to miss Sojiro—fuck, he’s going to miss Sojiro so, so much.</p><p>He’s going to miss Hifumi: his girlfriend, which still feels so odd to say even after three months of dating. Hifumi, who was so cool and intelligent and pretty that to this day, Akira is unsure of why she ever chose to be with someone like him. He has to admit that he’s also going to miss sex with Hifumi (he’s really, really going to miss sex and touching and warmth in general), so open and reciprocal despite his valiant attempts to convince her to fool around in the church. He’d been close to persuading her when he was on the cusp of leaving, but then he made a joke about the spiritual pleasures of self-flagellation, and she simply raised an eyebrow, deeply confused.</p><p>If he thinks about how much he’s going to miss every single one of the Phantom Thieves, then each hurt Akira has folded away neatly inside of him will unravel and burst like a hemorrhage in the brain—so he tries not to think about them as much.</p><p>There is one person he very carefully does not miss. Because for everything and everyone in Tokyo that Akira will long for, he knows that they’ll all still be there when he inevitably finds his way back. Some selfish part of him refuses to miss the one person whose absence is guaranteed no matter how many times he returns, to give into the grief of knowing a boy’s ghost will haunt him across the city in billiards bars, in jazz clubs, in toy stores, in old coffee shops.</p><p>Akira gets onto his train, feeling his head has been stuffed through with cotton. He sits down and lets Morgana snore away in his carry-on bag. He’ll be fine, he thinks. Social media and chat messengers were things for a reason. His friends wouldn’t forget about him. He’ll graduate in a matter of a few months, and then, he supposes, his life will be whatever he wants it to be. He isn’t sure what it is at the moment, but he’ll probably figure it out.</p><p>Whatever happened this year would pass, as all things tended to. He suspends that thought in his mind, and finds it in himself to finally breathe.</p><p>Just as Akira turns his head to look outside, his phone buzzes next to him.</p><p> </p><p>—</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>(9:30 AM)</b>
</p><p><b>Akechi: </b> I’m alive, asshole.<br/>
<b>Akechi: </b>Don’t text me back.</p><p> </p><p>—</p><p> </p><p>He stares at the two texts. Rereads them. He presses his thumb against the recipient’s name, as if touching it will reveal some hidden trick, some code that will scramble the letters back into something that makes sense. No matter how many times he scrolls to and from the contact page, the sender remains the same. Akechi Goro has sent you 2 new messages. Akechi Goro. Akechi—</p><p>“Morgana,” Akira hisses, and he shakes the bag to wake him up.</p><p>Morgana wrinkles his face and paws Akira’s hand away. “Stoooop, it’s sleep time.” He yawns and stretches. “It’s been a very long morning of sad goodbyes, and I just wanna nap.”</p><p>Akira shoves the phone in front of Morgana, who freezes when he sees the screen lit up with notifications. “Please tell me that Futaba was right about me being illiterate and that I can’t be reading this correctly.”</p><p>“Akechi Goro,” Morgana yelps, and Akira’s stomach drops. “He messaged you? But Akechi—”</p><p>Akechi, who was supposed to have disappeared with Maruki’s false reality a month ago. Akechi, who ordered Akira to let him die. Akechi, who is decidedly not dead and messaged Akira to let him know as much in the way that only Akechi could: like a complete and utter dick.</p><p>“Akechi is alive,” Akira finishes. The words sink in and settle somewhere in his consciousness, suddenly occupying the open vacancies in Akira’s mind. Like a mantra, they echo back at him: <em>Akechi is alive, Akechi is alive, Akechi is alive</em>.</p><p>“What are you going to do?”</p><p>Akira blinks and turns to look back down at Morgana. His face is pulled into a concerned frown as his gaze flits from Akira to the messages still left open on the screen. Numbly, Akira picks his phone back up and hovers his fingers over the keyboard. “What do you think is the appropriate response?” he asks, biting his lips in consideration. “Welcome back? I appreciate the heads up? Are you sure this time?”</p><p>Morgana glances over the series of messages again, his tail an anxious wave of motion behind him. “I think it’s pretty clear that he doesn’t want you to respond,” he says finally. “I don’t know how else to read it when he says, <em> Don’t text me back</em>.”</p><p>Akira thinks. “No, this is very standard of Akechi,” he says, shaking his head. “He’ll say one thing, but then he actually wants you to do another. Like that one time we were talking and he said that he couldn’t possibly bore me with his musings on Hegel and then I asked him anyways and he spent the rest of the night ranting about absolute idealism and dialectical thinking and the liminal spaces between self-identity and perception.”</p><p>Morgana’s tail is whipping back and forth faster. Akira reaches out a hand to scratch behind his ears to ease whatever seems to be troubling him. “So, in other words,” Akira elaborates, as he absently pets Morgana’s fur, “he does want me to text back and is probably waiting for my response as we speak.”</p><p>“Akira, I don’t think—”</p><p>Akira keeps Morgana’s paws away with one hand as he sends off a reply in the other.</p><p>—</p><p>
  <b>(9:40 AM)</b>
</p><p><b>Akira: </b> welcome back to the land of the living<br/>
<b>Akira: </b>you’re as pleasant as always huh (:</p><p>—</p><p>“There,” he says, and places the phone back down. Morgana looks aghast. “And now we wait.”</p><p>His phone buzzes almost immediately. He snatches it back up, ready to fall into the familiar rush of caustic banter, when he sees the notification.</p><p>—</p><p>
  <b>(9:40 AM)</b>
</p><p><b>ERROR-0202: </b>The number you are trying to text is out of service. Please attempt to contact through another method.</p><p>—</p><p>Huh. That wasn’t what he expected.</p><p>“Akira—"</p><p>“I’ll try again,” he says, and types out something else.</p><p>—</p><p>
  <b>(9:41 AM)</b>
</p><p><b>Akira: </b>weird my phone won’t let me send messages to u</p><p>
  <b>(9:41 AM)</b>
</p><p><b>ERROR-0202: </b>The number you are trying to text is out of service. Please attempt to contact through another method.</p><p>—</p><p>“Maybe his phone is turned off,” Morgana says, voice pitched into a high, shaking note. “Do you wanna give it some time and see if it just works later?”</p><p>“Maybe,” Akira repeats, and slides his phone back into his bag. Morgana nestles next to it, peering up at Akira with wide, blue eyes. He continues to scratch behind Morgana’s ears as he leans his head against the window. The movement of the train vibrates against him, jittering his head and teeth in minute shivers.</p><p>The thing is—Akechi never turned off his phone. He was unfailingly quick to respond to Akira in the past, even when he’d dropped his detective prince façade—always so ready with a witty retort, refusing to back down even over something as banal as Akira sending him shitty memes over text. There was no way that Akechi would tell him that he was alive and then just drop off the face of the earth without another scathing insult to leave Akira with. That’s not what his and Akira’s relationship was like. He thought Akechi knew that.</p><p>“Sleep,” Morgana commands, as firmly as always, and so Akira does what he’s told and closes his eyes, letting the three words curled up inside of him lull him into unconsciousness.</p><p> </p><p>—</p><p> </p><p>Akira is dreaming.</p><p>He’s making coffee beyond Leblanc’s counter. Ryuji and Futaba are arguing passionately in one of the booths about who’s the hottest Neo Featherman character. Yusuke is sitting across from them, diligently sketching as he shovels his way through his third plate of curry and rice. At another table, Ann and Haru have taken it upon themselves to dress up Morgana in weird outfits they brought from their own closets, as Makoto watches in faint horror. He’s content just observing them, even as Ryuji and Futaba’s argument reaches screeching volumes.</p><p>“Ryuji, we already established how bad your taste was after you tried to make us watch School Days,” Futaba is saying somewhere in the background, “but thinking Yellow Owl is the hottest Featherman when Pink Argus is right there—you have been officially banned from giving any opinions, ever.”</p><p>Ryuji sputters. “Hey, School Days isn’t just some lame hentai, you know. It had some, uh, really meaningful messages—”</p><p>“Really? Then tell us about your very thoughtful analysis on the sex and graphic murder scene in episode nine—”</p><p>“Ryuji, please refrain from vibrating so much,” Yusuke says sharply. “You’re shaking the table and ruining my linework.”</p><p>“Yeah, stop interfering with Inari’s linework, you <em> dipshit</em>—"</p><p>“Futaba, language!” Sojiro emerges from the kitchen, his arms sternly crossed against his chest even as the corners of his mouth quirk up. He winks at Akira and points a finger off to the side. Akira brings his head up from the coffee pot to see where he’s pointing. “I think you have someone waiting for you.”</p><p>“Hello,” Akechi greets. He’s standing by the front door, hand raised in a polite wave. “May I take a seat?”</p><p>“Akechi,” Akira says. Distantly, he can feel the name suffuse him in a warm, filmy haze. He blames it on the claustrophobia of having everyone else crowd the café. “Grab a chair at the counter, and I’ll brew your usual order.”</p><p>“Ah, my thanks.” Akechi slides into the stool in front of him, folding his palms beneath his chin as he leans on the counter. “I don’t know how I’d function without the expertise of your barista skills, Akira.”</p><p>“Just know that I’m always willing to accept tips,” he teases back lightly. He sets down a mug in front of him, and Akechi accepts it with a gloved hand, murmuring another thank you under his breath. Akira watches him as he cools the drink with a delicate blow of his mouth, the steam of the coffee wisping toward to fog his glasses. He scrunches his nose and takes them off to wipe them down with a dish towel, looking back up to the sounds of Akechi’s laughter.</p><p>“Sorry about that,” says Akechi, smirking and not sounding apologetic at all. “But seeing as how those lenses of yours are fake anyways, I doubt I created any true impediment to your vision.”</p><p>Akira brings a hand to his chest in mock offense. “I’ll have you know that my doctor looked me over personally, and she prescribed these to me as a special order.”</p><p>“I see. And what was her diagnosis?”</p><p> “The world isn’t ready to get lost in my hypnotizing, enigmatic gaze—” Akira pauses, and finishes with, “—itis.”</p><p>“Hm, that certainly sounds dire.” Akechi tilts his head at him, considering, and suddenly extends his fingers towards Akira’s face. Before Akira can think about the brush of Akechi’s hand against his cheekbones, his glasses are snatched off. He blinks and sees Akechi peering back at him, dark eyes now obscured by wide, black frames. The sight plucks at the string of something else in his memories—Akechi pouting at him, just like that, his hair mussed under the low lights of the city—before it slides away, just as easily as it came.</p><p>“I think I may have just caught you in a lie,” Akechi says, “because I don’t really see a difference between wearing these glasses and not.”</p><p>Akira shakes his head. “That’s because they weren’t made for you, Mr. Detective,” he says somberly. “Only I’m allowed to gaze through its magical lenses.” </p><p>“Oh, is that so? Pray tell, what do you see when you look through them?”</p><p>Akira glances over to where Ryuji and Futaba are two seconds away from going at each other’s throats, where Yusuke is mumbling about the rapturous delight of curry sauce, where Ann and Makoto and Haru are taking pictures of Morgana in sunglasses, where Sojiro is huffing and sighing off to the side as if he isn’t enjoying every single minute of it.</p><p>He slides his gaze back to Akechi, still wearing Akira’s glasses over the fine bridge of his nose, amused and fond.</p><p>“I—” he starts to say, and then he feels his vision begin to blur rapidly. He tries to blink it away, but the murkiness grows worse and worse. He tosses out a hand blindly to center himself, startling when he feels the cool touch of metal once again on his face, the flashing heat of skin against skin before it pulls away. </p><p>“A pity,” he hears a voice tut, just as he begins to black out. “I suppose you can tell me another time. Time to wake up now, Akira.”</p><p> </p><p>—</p><p> </p><p>Akira wakes up to Morgana pawing on his thighs. His glasses are askew from tossing around in his sleep, and he reaches up to gently guide them back into place.</p><p>“Let’s go,” Morgana says. “Train’s at our stop.”</p><p> </p><p>—</p><p> </p><p>Akira’s hometown is small and relatively peaceful, the complete opposite of Tokyo’s neon landscape. When Akira steps back into its streets, almost a year after his arrest, nothing about it has changed. The same greys and browns saturate into the old buildings, peeling and waning with age. The town’s power lines sweep in low arcs from street block to block. He can almost see the corner where he first encountered Shido and that woman—where, in that moment, he forgot the monotonous shades of who he was so used to being and let all of his anger and desperation bloom into living color.</p><p>Akira walks in slow strides towards his childhood home, and he thinks that he’d rather be arrested and interrogated and get his ass beat by those pigs all over again than allow himself to fade back into this bleak backdrop.</p><p>“So you grew up here?” Morgana whispers into his ear, peeking up from the bag strewn against his shoulder.</p><p>“Yep.”</p><p>He says nothing more as they make the trek back up to his apartment on the second floor, Morgana twisting his head around to catalogue their surroundings. When he reaches in his pocket to fish for his keys, his hand is shaking in fine tremors. He grips his wrist tight, feeling the bones grind against each other, and manages to slot the key in the lock. The door opens.</p><p>“Oh, Akira, welcome home,” his mother greets him as he toes his shoes off, bows his head down. She’s fixing a shiny pair of earrings to herself in the living room mirror. “I didn’t realize you were coming back today.”</p><p>“Yes,” he says.</p><p>“Well, you can make yourself dinner as usual since your father and I will be out late on a business call,” she says. She gives him a quick, curt once-over, gaze dropping onto the bag tossed over his shoulder. “Is that … a cat?”</p><p>“His name is Morgana,” he says. Morgana quietly purrs beside him.</p><p>“I suppose you can keep it as long as you feed it yourself.” She sighs and turns back to her reflection, smoothing a finger over the strands of curly hair ghosting out of her bun. His mother had always cut a lovely, striking figure in any room; Akira was told many times that he physically took after her. In his memories, she was beautiful, austere—a faint sketch of a person, somehow existing in a tenuous thread to Akira. “Will you be okay by yourself tonight?”</p><p>“Sure,” he says, nodding. He tugs his bags and Morgana closer to him and begins to shuffle towards his room.</p><p>Just as he’s about to brush past her, she stops him, with a light touch to his shoulder. The contact makes his nerves seize up in response, and he just barely represses the urge to shrug her off.</p><p>“Akira,” she begins. Her mouth twists, and she continues speaking with a small frown, wrinkles just slightly visible beneath her eyes. “I’m hoping this time away has made you less—troublesome. Last year was such a terrible misstep. Your father and I only wish that you have a normal, quiet life for yourself one day.” </p><p>A normal, quiet life, he thinks. Akira can’t count the number of cuts, bruises, and gashes he has accumulated from going toe to toe with monsters all year. His hand still twitches sometimes as if trying to remember the shape of his revolver, the way the trigger fit around his fingertips. When he closes his eyes, he can see the wild battle cries of Ryuji and Makoto as they thrashed a shadow together, the elegant poetry of Yusuke’s katana dancing through the air, the unabashed joy of Haru with an axe. He can see a boy smiling down at him, blood catching in the light strands of his hair, Akira’s heartbeat in his grip.</p><p>He pats his mother’s hand with all the gentleness he can muster.</p><p>“I’ll be good,” he tells her. “I hope your meeting goes well.”</p><p>His mother simply nods her head, eyes already turned away from him as Akira quietly makes his way to his room, the phantom ache of scars tingling over his body.</p><p> </p><p>—</p><p> </p><p>He doesn’t bother to unpack his shit. He throws his bags haphazardly to the floor, making sure Morgana lands safely beside him before doing so, and slumps down into the comforter on his bed. It smells old and chalky, like it hasn’t been washed or used in months. He wraps himself in it anyways, throwing an arm across his face.</p><p>Morgana gracefully leaps up onto Akira’s bed. “You should probably clean soon,” he chides. Akira just looks at him from his swathe of blankets, and Morgana rolls his eyes back. “Ok, fine, it’s been a long day. But I think I’m inhaling dust as we speak.”</p><p>“Can’t be worse than Sojiro’s place,” he mumbles into his pillow. He checks his phone and finds himself scrolling through his messages again, glancing over the typical overload of texts and memes from the Phantom Thieves (he’ll check in with them later, when he has the energy to churn up some kind of banter), a stern reminder from Takemi to eat three meals a day, and then finally, the glaring error messages left untouched from hours ago.</p><p>He doesn’t know what he expects when he sends off another text.</p><p>—</p><p>
  <b>(6:04 PM)</b>
</p><p><b>Akira: </b>hey asshole</p><p>
  <b>(6:04 PM)</b>
</p><p><b>ERROR-0202: </b>The number you are trying to text is out of service. Please attempt to contact through another method.</p><p>—</p><p>Out of service, he mouths. To Morgana, he says, “That can’t mean his phone is turned off. His number has to be completely disconnected.”</p><p>Morgana makes the feline equivalent of a shrug, licking at his paws. “Don’t ask me. I’m not the tech expert.”</p><p>Tech expert. He’s an idiot. He thumbs over to his direct messages with Futaba, which, at the moment, really just consists of her ranting about Yusuke’s complete uselessness in multiplayer games. He makes a note to ask Yusuke about his exploits in Minecraft later, and starts typing.</p><p>—</p><p>
  <b>(6:06 PM)</b>
</p><p><b>Akira: </b> futaba<br/>
<b>Futaba: </b> i have been summoned from my cave<br/>
<b>Futaba: </b> what’s up country boy<br/>
<b>Akira: </b> inaccurate but i’ll let it slide<br/>
<b>Akira: </b> i have a question<br/>
<b>Futaba:</b> (ಠ_ಠ )<br/>
<b>Akira: </b> when ur texting someone<br/>
<b>Akira: </b> but u get an error code back<br/>
<b>Akira: </b> telling u the number is out of service, pls contact thru another method<br/>
<b>Akira: </b> blah blah u get it<br/>
<b>Futaba: </b> uh huh (ಠ_ಠ )<br/>
<b>Akira: </b> so anyways<br/>
<b>Akira: </b> what does that mean<br/>
<b>Futaba: </b> […]<br/>
<b>Futaba: </b> well in technical terms<br/>
<b>Futaba: </b> it literally just means that lmao<br/>
<b>Futaba: </b> number is no longer in use, is disconnected permanently, will no longer receive messages etc<br/>
<b>Futaba: </b> but if we’re talking about implicit emotional human signaling<br/>
<b>Futaba: </b> (which by no means i am The Expert of……..)<br/>
<b>Futaba: </b> i think it may also mean fuck off (◕‿◕)♡<br/>
<b>Futaba: </b>why r u asking hmmm hmm HMMMM</p><p>—</p><p>Akira locks his phone and faces it down onto the sheets. He doesn’t want to stare at the screen anymore.</p><p>“If it really is him,” Morgana says, curled up next to Akira, “then at least he let you know that he was back.”</p><p>“I guess.” The thought doesn’t bring him that much comfort. His phone pings again, and he fights down disappointment when he sees who the notification is from.</p><p>—</p><p>
  <b>(6:11 PM)</b>
</p><p><b>Futaba: </b> hold on<br/>
<b>Futaba: </b> akechi goro<br/>
<b>Futaba: </b> mr. i was supposed to die forreal this time<br/>
<b>Futaba: </b> he’s the one who texted u?? uh<br/>
<b>Futaba: </b>r u good</p><p>—</p><p>Of course Futaba knows already. He’s about to deflect, when his screen vibrates and lights up with another name: <em>Togo Hifumi</em>. Oh, fuck, she’s calling him. He sits up in bed and shakes himself out of his cloudy stupor, exhaling just once before he picks up the call.</p><p>“Hey, Hifumi,” he greets her. “What’s up?”</p><p>“Akira,” she replies, and the light familiarity of her voice strikes a chord in him, brings him back a little closer to the present. “I just wanted to check in and see how you were doing. I figured that your train should’ve arrived by now.”</p><p>“Oh, yep,” he replies. “I’m all tucked away in bed already.”</p><p>He hears her giggle on the other end. “It’s barely a little past 6, and you already want to sleep,” Hifumi says. “I guess that’s to be expected. I can imagine it was a long day for you and Morgana.”</p><p>“Mm, it was manageable, I think we’ll adjust in no time,” he says, the words slipping easily through him. “Anyways, how was your day? What have you been up to?”</p><p>“I just had the most invigorating practice match with an elderly woman in a cafe,” Hifumi says, her tone taking on that dreamy, untouchable air as it always did when she talked about shogi. “She’s apparently been playing her whole life, and I could tell. I had a hard time edging the game to a check. She seemed very amused when I told her that she reminded me of a proud lioness on the rock, protecting her cubs with a regal yet undeniably fierce energy.”</p><p>“That’s high compliments from you,” he says, huffing out a quiet laugh. “I didn’t realize you were venturing into animalistic metaphors now.”</p><p>“Yes, I’ve been reading some magazines on the cultural habits of certain mammals to further cultivate my understanding of others,” Hifumi says, because she is Hifumi and far, far too studious and worldly for Akira’s small, tired brain to comprehend. “In any case, I just wanted to call you and hear your voice again. It’s hardly been a handful of hours, and I—I already miss you.”</p><p>“I miss you, too,” Akira replies back on autopilot, and he curls his hand around the phone even tighter. His whole body aches with the enormity of the emotion. He doesn’t even know if he just means Hifumi.</p><p>“I’ll let you get some rest,” she says, sigh soft over the static of the call. “I can’t wait to talk with you again later. Good night, Akira.”</p><p>“Good night, Hifumi,” he says. He hangs up, lets the phone slip from his grip back down to the sheets.</p><p> </p><p>—</p><p> </p><p>The next few days pass by uneventfully. He barely sees his parents, his father giving him a firm pat on the back in the morning after his return. He circles around the block during the low dusk of evenings, waving back at people whose faces swim uncertainly in his memories. He listens to Hifumi as she brainstorms new strategies for her upcoming shogi tournament, and he chats with the Phantom Thieves when he can. One night, he plays Minecraft with Futaba and Yusuke. Futaba does not mention anything about Akira’s last conversation with her, instead screeching at Yusuke over voice chat as he attempts to build a house over lava.</p><p>On the eighth or so day since Akira returned, Morgana blocks his room’s doorway as he’s preparing to leave the house again. </p><p>“Do I need to give you a secret password or something?” he asks, crouching down to meet the stony expression on Morgana’s face.</p><p>“Clean your room and unpack your stuff,” he orders without brooking any room for argument. “The mothballs in here are growing mothballs. They’re itching my fur.”</p><p>“But—”</p><p>“No,” Morgana says. “And don’t ask me to do it for you. I can’t hold things very well in this form, and you know that.”</p><p>So that’s how Akira gets bullied into cleaning by his cat, as per usual. He puts on some music as he drags a mop across his floor and dusts down his desk and dresser, taking care to get any tricky spots Morgana points out. He thinks about just shoving his luggage of clothes into the closet, but figures that he’d eventually get bullied by Morgana again to organize them in the future. He tucks his old Shujin uniform carefully in a corner of his closet, smoothing out the lines of the jacket, the plaid pants.</p><p>Once everything is considerably shiny and less asthma-inducing, he settles down on the floor to rummage through the rest of his bags. He didn’t realize he brought so many souvenirs—on his bookshelf, he lays out the king’s piece Hifumi gave him in Jinbocho, the swan boat Iwai gifted to him with a wry smile in Inokashira Park, the small nude statue Yusuke serenely bestowed upon him despite Akira’s firm refusal. He pulls out his collection of worn, dog-eared books, still a little proud to realize how he’s read through most of them. When he reaches inside his bag again, his hand snags at something at the bottom.</p><p>He lifts it up to see a black glove dangling from his fingertips.</p><p>“What’s that?”</p><p>Morgana comes up from behind him, nudging his head at the glove curiously. That’s right; Morgana wasn’t there when Akechi and Akira fought in Mementos. Before everything that happened, that was Akira’s first glimpse into the other boy’s gaping, bottomless fury—how, underneath the pearly-white TV smile and shiny idol hair, Akechi Goro was a shitty liar with an even shittier temper.</p><p><em> And </em> astonishingly violent, Akira recalls. He doesn’t know why the thought makes him feel so fond.</p><p>“It’s from Akechi,” he says. “He gave it to me one day after we hung out.”</p><p>Apparently, that isn’t a sufficient enough explanation because Morgana just continues to stare at him blankly.</p><p>“He told me that in the West, there’s this tradition,” Akira explains further, fiddling with the material, “to ‘throw one’s glove at their opponent when demanding a duel. If the opponent accepts the glove, then the duel is also accepted.’ So I took it and kept it for the next time we, um. Hung out.”</p><p>“I see,” Morgana says, even if it sounds like he really, really doesn’t. He squints up at Akira, with that eerie, all-knowing manner cats tended to conduct themselves in. “Wait—is that why you said that thing to him, back in Shido’s Palace? About holding onto his glove?”</p><p>Oh. He did say that. Akira doesn’t actually remember making the decision to say those words consciously, deliberately. He remembered pressing his hands against the cold steel of a wall, listening to the rasps of a boy reciting his will. He remembered, in his own desperation, trying to shape his thoughts into something tangible, something sacred and lasting, with all the somber recklessness of a blood oath.</p><p>“Yeah, I told him that I would give it back to him when we saw each other again,” he says. He rubs the cloth between his fingertips, smooth and pristine. “I guess he forgot about our promise.”</p><p>Morgana just gives a sad meow at that, which is somehow worse than any other reaction he could’ve received from his talking cat. Akira turns away and shoves the glove back into one of the bag’s pockets. He slings the bag on a hook in another corner of his closet, letting it swing carelessly in the dark.</p><p>Later that day, when he returns home from a quiet walk around the town, he flops back into bed and gets ready for another night of scrolling through useless shit on social media feeds. After refreshing the same pages four or five times over, he hesitates for a moment, and then tabs over to his phone browser, typing <em> Western duel traditions </em> into the search engine.</p><p>He sends off another text shortly after.</p><p> </p><p>—</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>(10:04 PM)</b>
</p><p><b>Akira: </b> so i googled that thing u said about throwing gloves in western duels<br/>
<b>Akira: </b>apparently that gesture is supposed to be really insulting? please confirm</p><p>
  <b>(10:04 PM)</b>
</p><p><b>ERROR-0202: </b>The number you are trying to text is out of service. Please attempt to contact through another method.</p><p> </p><p>—</p><p> </p><p>Akira is dreaming.</p><p>It’s nighttime again, and he’s walking back home. The town and its buildings are washed out in monochrome, like one of those old films his parents keep in storage. The roads are empty. His body is moving without him really meaning it to, his back slumped into a limp curve.</p><p>He’s about to turn a corner when a scream pitches through the air.</p><p>He tenses up at that, and then without a second thought, he starts sprinting in the other direction towards the sound. As he gets closer and closer, he can see the white headlights of a car peeking from another street; he can hear the faint noises of protest, a deeper, meaner voice trying to subdue another one into silence.</p><p>He finally arrives at the scene. A bald, drunk man is trying to drag someone into a car, as the obscured figure tries to fight off the heavy grip on their wrist. Akira rushes forward with that sharp shot of adrenaline in his lungs and stops dead when he sees the person behind the scream.</p><p>“Get the fuck off me,” Akechi snarls. Neither of them seem to have noticed Akira yet. “If you don’t take your filthy, meaty paws—”</p><p>“You think you’re worth this trouble, you brat,” the bald man slurs back, still refusing to let go. Something in Akira’s brain pieces together the name <em> Shido</em>, and disgust immediately begins to pool like acid in the pit of his stomach. “You’re fucking—fucking nothing without me, and you’re gonna be a little shit stain on the wall if you don’t get in the goddamn car—”</p><p>“Hey,” Akira hears another voice yell out, and he realizes half a second later that it’s his own as he comes to stand before the two, spine rigid. Shido doesn’t even bother turning around to look at him, but Akechi whips his head sharply in Akira’s direction. He doesn’t seem very pleased at what he sees.</p><p>“<em>Why the hell are you here</em>,” he hisses.</p><p>“I heard you screaming,” Akira replies. He doesn’t know he got here, where he was even walking from. All he registers is how, even in his anger, Akechi’s voice is creeping towards panic, his body quivering just ever so slightly as he tries to elbow Shido away and shimmy out of his tight hold. His fists curl at his sides, fingernails biting against his skin, and Akira steps forward, calling out more loudly. “Hey, you ugly bald fuck—<em>l</em><em>et go of him</em>.”</p><p>That grabs Shido’s attention, and he cranes his head in Akira’s direction, face flushed and eyes narrowed into harsh slits. “Oh, look, another brat who doesn’t know his place,” he says mockingly. “You here to save your little friend?”</p><p>“We are not friends,” Akechi interjects with a pointed glare. He looks back at Akira. “Leave. I don’t need your help.”</p><p>“Yeah, this isn’t any of your business, kid,” Shido says. His hand twists tighter around Akechi’s wrist. “Scram before I have to teach you a lesson, too.”</p><p>Everything in Akira’s body is poised to move, to throw the first, glorious punch and push that fucker off like the voice in his head is whispering for him to do. But he’s pinned in place by Akechi’s eyes, the only objects in his dulled vision that seem to be teeming with life, vicious and vivid.</p><p>“Didn’t you hear me the first time, or are you brain-damaged?” Akechi barks at him. “Get the fuck away from here—I don’t need your ridiculous savior complex getting in the way.” He says, more quietly, “I never have.”</p><p>And at this, he slides his eyes away, Akira’s world returning to a washed-out sea of greys and blacks.</p><p>He opens his mouth to answer back when a familiar haziness begins to fall over him once more, his lungs collapsing inward as he suffocates. The last thing Akira sees before he is swallowed back into his own consciousness is Akechi, glancing back up, that sudden, angry burst of color bleeding once more into him before it ebbs away into nothing.</p><p> </p><p> —</p><p> </p><p>Akira pushes himself up in bed, sweat cooling on his temples.</p><p>He’s shaking Morgana awake before he thinks better of it. Morgana reflexively claws at him, but then his eyes blearily open, peering up questioningly at Akira in the dark of the room.</p><p>“What if he’s in trouble,” he says, the words frantic on his tongue. “What if—what if the number got disconnected because he got into some trouble with Shido again, or Shido’s associates?”</p><p>“Whose number?” Morgana asks, scratching at his eyes. “Akechi’s?”</p><p>Akira nods. His mind feels like a live wire, snatching and shocking at his nerves.</p><p>“That could be a possibility,” Morgana says, slowly. “But a little before we left, Sae told us that she’d taken care of almost every one of Shido’s accomplices.”</p><p>“<em> Almost </em> everyone,” he repeats back.</p><p>“I’m sure we can ask her again to see where her progress is now. And besides, don’t you think Akechi is the kind of person that can take care of himself?”</p><p>That’s the problem, Akira thinks, mulishly. He's been doing that his whole life.</p><p>“I think you should think more on it tomorrow,” Morgana says, and he pushes Akira lightly back down, nestling into a warm shape on his chest. “Let’s sleep for now.”</p><p>Shortly after he says that, Morgana’s breathing begins to even out again. Akira just tucks his arms behind his head and wills himself to close his eyes.</p><p> </p><p>—</p><p> </p><p>He leaves the subject alone—or at least, he tries to. It’s hard not to think about the image of Akechi from his dream, snarling like a cornered animal in Shido’s hands. Not that he thought Akechi was <em> prey </em>, per se—but it made his stomach turn, over and over again, thinking of how dream-Akechi had spat at Akira to leave him alone. Maybe that’s what real-Akechi wanted to, if he was actually alive like the asshole said he was.</p><p>Futaba is the one who eventually brings the subject back up when he’s in a call with her days later.</p><p>She’s talking to him about her excitement about starting high school in a matter of weeks, even with her programmed distaste for any and all authoritative institutions. She and Sumire have been Facetiming each other about their plans for the first semester. Next week, they’re going to go buy school supplies and spend the day in Akihabara together, Futaba tells him, a tad bit more shyly.</p><p>Akira’s happy for her. He really is. Even with his own mounting dread at having to sit under the eyes of a teacher again—this time, without the comforting presence of Ann doodling or pretending not to space out in front of him—he’s glad to hear hope creep into Futaba’s voice, the reminder of how achingly far she has come from when he first met her. At the back of his mind, it makes not accepting Maruki’s deal and letting Wakaba die again sting less, knowing that Futaba is choosing a life for herself again.</p><p>“Inari and Ryuji are gonna drop by later tonight so I can beat their asses in Smash,” Futaba continues, cheerfully menacing. “Inari said he wants to try maining Sonic. He likes how their color palettes match.”</p><p>The mention of Yusuke and Ryuji summons another pang in his chest, but Akira ignores it. “Yeah, I can see that,” he says. “You should show him the anime.”</p><p>“Eugh, don’t even joke about that D-level trash,” Futaba groans. “Anyways, I wanted to talk to you about something else.”</p><p>“No, I’m not going to convince Sojiro to extend your curfew. That was a hard-fought trial of wills I went through myself. You have to endure it, too, as the rite of the younger sibling.”</p><p>“Psh, a mere mortal like yourself cannot conceive of the powers I hold over the parental unit,” Futaba says ominously. “But nope—I wanted to talk about you trying to ghost me after I found out Akechi Goro slid into your DMs.”</p><p>“I didn’t ghost you,” Akira says. “I’m talking to you right now.”</p><p>“New rule from the moderator: no more deflecting,” she orders back. “I can already see that his number is completely out of use now. I can also see that you’ve still been trying to text him despite knowing this, like you’re some pining shoujo protagonist writing secret love notes in the back of her journal as she stares wistfully out the classroom window—"</p><p>“I knew Haru shouldn’t have lent you her collection of romance manga.”</p><p>“Don’t act like you didn’t ask to borrow some either—hey, you ignored my rule! No more deflecting.”</p><p>“Deflecting from what?” he asks, just to be petulant, toying with a loose thread on his shirt.</p><p>“Deflecting from however you feel all about this,” Futaba says. “And—ugh—once again, I am not the expert of feeling things and talking about—things—but even a brick wall could tell that you’re bothered by this.”</p><p>“Well, it’s like you said: he clearly wants me to fuck off. That, or he’s being hunted down by some secret services ops or a yakuza gang, and this is his cry for help.”</p><p>There’s a pause on the other end of the line. “Okay, you say that jokingly, but are you actually worried?” Futaba asks, hesitant. “’Cause, in case you’ve forgotten, I’m a S-rank hacker who can check for you.”</p><p>That makes Akira straighten up. “Wait—you can do that? You can check how he is, where he is?”</p><p>“Well, it’s not gonna be the easiest thing in the world, especially with how he disconnected his number and dropped off the face of all social media. But it’s not impossible. I can probably dig around his digital footprints and see where that takes me. At the very least, I’ll tell you if he’s actually alive or not.”</p><p>“What about—” Akira swallows past the knot in his throat. “What about getting back in contact with him?”</p><p>There’s a longer pause this time.</p><p>“I’ll see how much I can dig up on him,” Futaba says, finally. “Although … Akira, if he really doesn’t want to talk with you, then I’d think more about what you want to do. If I’m being honest, I don’t really know how to feel about Akechi myself—” and that sends a fresh spike of guilt down his heart because he’s a thoughtless, inconsiderate dick “—but I get why he would need his space after everything shitty that happened to him, y’know?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Akira says numbly. “Yeah. That makes sense.”</p><p>“I’ll let you know when I find something.” The sound of a doorbell cuts through the line’s static. “Oh, shit, that’s probably them—”</p><p>“I’ll let you guys have fun,” he says. “Tell Ryuji and Yusuke I said hi.”</p><p>“Yep, will do,” Futaba says, voice already further away from the call. “And don’t worry your fluffy little head about the other stuff—Ace Hacker Alibaba is on the case! Oh, and say hi to Mona for me, will you? ”</p><p>She clicks off.</p><p>He sets his phone down and lets out a shaky exhale. He’s fine. He’s fine. It was a good conversation with his good friend Futaba, who left to go hang out with their other good friends Yusuke and Ryuji. Akechi may or may not be getting hunted down and tortured somewhere, but Futaba said she would check. He’ll try not to think about that part too much. He knows how to deal, how to compartmentalize.</p><p>Akira’s just—he’s just getting very tired of ending these phone calls like this, like he’s reaching for something that’s not quite there, as alone and aching as he was at the beginning.</p><p> </p><p>—</p><p> </p><p>He spends the next few weeks toiling with the impending start of the academic year and trying to not imagine Akechi, dead in a ditch somewhere. When he finds it in himself to leave his room, he goes out to the local supermarket to buy groceries and cook at home. His family’s kitchen is nothing like the cozy, compact walls of Leblanc, but it has the bare necessities: a functioning stove, a knife set, some pots and pans. His parents use it sparingly, so he usually has it to himself, free to experiment with all kinds of recipes he pulls up on his phone.</p><p>One night, he tries making Sojiro’s curry to see if he remembers how, but as soon as the thick combination of sweetness and spice hits the air, he feels a keen sense of displacement, as if the memory of its scent and taste doesn’t belong in the cold, empty spaces of his apartment. When he finishes the pot, he ends up giving some to Morgana and packs away the rest of it to give to the supermarket’s owner the next day. He doesn’t try to make coffee for himself either.</p><p>It’s a nice hobby, otherwise. Mindless. Cooking is just throwing a bunch of shit into a pan and making it work somehow. If he’s being truly honest with himself, Akira operates on intuition for most things in life anyways, whether it be cooking or executing heists in the Metaverse—his plans were more a patchwork of instincts, resilience, and the stray thought of <em> this’ll probably be okay </em> than they were any resemblance of coherent thinking.</p><p>There’s another night where he’s poking at a slab of marinated pork filet sizzling away in the pan, trying to determine if it’s edible or likely to induce salmonella. His phone starts to vibrate in his pocket, and he picks it up with his less dirty hand.</p><p>He answers just as a splash of oil hits his arm. “Fuck, ow—"</p><p>“Akira,” Hifumi’s voice says, mildly alarmed. “Are you okay?”</p><p>“Hifumi, hi,” he says, and he steps over to the sink to run his arm under cold water. “Sorry, was just cooking and burned myself a little. What’s up?”</p><p>“Oh, I hope it isn’t anything too serious,” she says with the same faint note of concern. “I was just calling to see if you saw my messages. I thought we planned to talk around 6.”</p><p>Akira glances at the time on the stove. It’s 7:44 PM.</p><p>“Did we?” he asks weakly, knocking his brain for when they exactly scheduled to call each other. With a voice that sounds suspiciously like Sojiro urging in his head, he rushes to rectify his mistake, fumbling through an apology. “Shit, I’m sorry, Hifumi, I must have lost track of time. Completely my fault.”</p><p>He winces as soon as the words leave his mouth. He sounds like such an asshole.</p><p>“That’s fine, but if you ever need to reschedule, just let me know,” she says, after a short pause where Akira can feel his whole life collapsing before his eyes.</p><p>“How was your day?” he flings out, trying to salvage what he can of the conversation, all while monitoring the sizzle of the pan in his peripherals.</p><p>“A little exhausting,” Hifumi says, sighing. “I toured Kyoto University today.”</p><p>“Yeah? How was that?” The edges of the filet are beginning to char and crisp, and he frantically turns down the heat.</p><p>“It’s a beautiful campus. It’s almost fairy tale-like, the way the trees shade over certain parts of the buildings … but it’s a bit overwhelming to have to plan for entrance exams and cram school, and then to think of everything else that comes after once you’re accepted. I would just love to pursue a career in shogi by itself, but my counselors at Kosei recommended that I still consider getting a degree in another industry to broaden my prospects, especially in a country as competitive as Japan. What do you think?”</p><p>At the moment, Akira thinks that either he has cooked his pork into a dry, hard chunk, or he has charred the skin and left the insides still bloody. “What do you mean, specifically?”</p><p>“How do you feel when you think of the future?”</p><p>“Um,” Akira says, and the rusty motors in his brain grind to an unsteady halt. Did he think about the future? He supposes that he thought about it, in the same way most people thought about things that drowned them in ceaseless waves of boredom—which is to say, not at all. When he did allow himself to think about that unknowable stretch of time, he only got as far as what it would take for him to roll out of bed the next day. “I feel like it’s definitely a concept.”</p><p>Thankfully, Hifumi finds his ambivalence charming for whatever reason. “True, that’s a very eloquent way of putting it,” she says, amused. She lapses back into silence, before speaking up again, slightly more hesitant. “If I may be bold … do you ever think about the future in terms of … us?”</p><p>“Us,” Akira echoes back, because his speaking capabilities have been apparently limited to monosyllabic noises.</p><p>“I know that we’ve only been dating for a handful of months, and that we’re facing the current trial of long distance.” He can hear the way she subtly steels herself without pausing to stop, just like she does before calling a check in a match. “But I’m sure you know how much I … feel for you, Akira. I’d like to continue our time together as much as possible, if the circumstances allow for it.”</p><p>“Oh,” he says. “Yeah. I like being with you, too, Hifumi.”</p><p>It doesn’t feel like a lie. He really did ask Hifumi out because he liked her—talking with her in the church had always been a fun respite from the chaos of Palaces, and he always admired how capable she was, how she could create whole universes with a handful of wooden shogi pieces. He liked her hair. He liked how she read fantasy novels in her spare time. He liked kissing her. He liked how her endless font of curiosity and creativity also extended to their admittedly exhibitionist sex life—his sex drive especially appreciated that. He liked getting to cuddle with her after.</p><p>Most of all, when Akira was with her, he felt less alone.</p><p>He’s not sure if that’s a good reason though—dating someone, because they make you feel less lonely. Maybe Ann or Haru would know better. They seem like they would know.</p><p>“It’s a bit hard right now, not being able to see you,” Hifumi admits, shyer. “But I just wanted to let you know that that’s where my mind is at, for the time being. I can’t wait until the next time we see each other, as busy as we both are.”</p><p>“I’m sure it’ll be in no time,” he says. He defaults to something cheeky, light, to turn the mood around again. “Don’t miss me too much, okay? I don’t want to have to ask Yusuke to make you a body pillow with my face on it.”</p><p>“Cute in theory, but I’ll have to pass on this opportunity this time,” she says, giggling. “I’m sure I won’t grow that lovesick.”</p><p>They slip into a more natural stream of conversation after that. Hifumi tells him about the race of demonic trolls in the latest book she was reading; Akira solemnly tries to mimic what he thinks a troll demon sounds like. His pork comes out a little overdone, but that’s fine. He spends the rest of the night sawing into it and eating as he listens to Hifumi regale him with stories from another world.</p><p>When they eventually hang up and Akira goes to bed, he feels like the absence around his body is a little less noticeable—which is good, he thinks. People should make you feel like that.</p><p>He sends off another text before he can think better on it.</p><p> </p><p>—</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>(12:04 AM)</b>
</p><p><b>Akira: </b>what would hegel say about the crippling loneliness of existence </p><p>
  <b>(12:04 AM)</b>
</p><p><b>ERROR-0202: </b>The number you are trying to text is out of service. Please attempt to contact through another method.</p><p>
  <b>(12:04 AM)</b>
</p><p><b>Akira: </b> ok<br/>
<b>Akira: </b>that’s what i thought </p><p> </p><p>—</p><p> </p><p>School starts up again despite Akira’s valiant attempts to stop the time-space continuum. His father wishes him good luck. His mother, surprisingly, tells him that he looks handsome in his uniform. Akira silently disagrees—he still misses the stylish turtlenecks and plaid patterns of Shujin, even if Ryuji had hated them with a vengeance—but he takes the rare compliment for what it is and waves a goodbye on his way out. Morgana is stowed away secretly in his school bag, because Akira doesn’t know how he would function in a classroom without his emotional support cat.</p><p>Futaba still hasn’t said anything about He-Who-May-or-May-Not-Be-Alive. He figures that she’s probably busy with the start of the year, too. He texts her a bunch of kaomojis on her first day and tries to not check his phone too much during lectures.</p><p>Class is fine, even if his peers and teachers regard him with skeptical eyes. After last year, he’s used to the stares, the hushed gossip. It’s sweet of Morgana to growl and vibrate angrily in his bag whenever he catches something nasty being said in the hallway.</p><p>One of his classmates—Takeshita, he remembers—sidles up to Akira one day after class to needle him with questions.    </p><p>“Soooo, Kurusu,” he says, with the sleazy familiarity guys like him always exuded. “Tell me, how was life in the big city as a delinquent? You snag any good chicks?”</p><p>Akira, achingly, misses Makoto. She would’ve loved to verbally eviscerate someone like this. “Not quite,” he replies mildly. “But Tokyo was very cool to live in.”</p><p>“Oh, I bet.” Takeshita nods, and then, after looking back and forth, leans in a little closer. What is it about him, Akira thinks, despairingly, that makes his classmates so eager to invade his personal space? “I heard you got the boot because you assaulted some guy. Is it true? You can be honest with me, man, for real. No judgment.”</p><p>Akira considers being honest with him. He could tell him that he got falsely accused, that he got cleared of all charges just a month or two ago, and be done with it.</p><p>Because he has nothing to lose at this point—and some part of him relishes any opportunity to shit over Shido’s name, even indirectly—he opts for the half-truth.</p><p>“Yeah, it’s true,” he says. “I beat up some guy on a street corner, and someone called the cops on me.”</p><p>“Holy fuck,” Takeshita mouths, enraptured. “Why were you beating him up? Did he talk shit to you or somethin’?”</p><p>“He was picking on someone smaller and weaker than him.” He thinks of the woman, screaming and shrinking where no one could see her. He thinks of his dream, and all the faces of Shido’s other victims coalescing in his memories. “I guess some part of me couldn’t just watch and do nothing.”</p><p>“Damn, props to you, Kurusu,” Takeshita whistles. He cocks his head at him, considering. “I won’t lie to you though … you look pretty skinny. You weren’t scared about getting your ass beat?”</p><p>Akira smiles blandly, with just a hint of teeth. “Should I have been?”</p><p>Takeshita stares at him, and then gravely offers him a single fist. “Respect, bro.”</p><p>Akira bumps it back, and somehow ends up walking back home with Takeshita, who interrogates him in depth about whether or not he’s secretly part of a fight club. Morgana regards Takeshita with the same vaguely affronted air he put up when he first met Ryuji, but otherwise makes no comment about him, or how he seems to pay no mind to Akira’s supposed record as a violent delinquent. It’s both nostalgic and refreshing all at once.</p><p>The first week turns into the second, and then the third, and then midterms, and then finals. So far, his third year’s first semester doesn’t feel that much different than last year’s, minus the mind-fucking, monster-killing antics. He studies. He makes lock-picks that he’ll never use. He cooks more food than one person arguably needs and sometimes gives his extra bento boxes to Takeshita, who seems very enamored with Akira’s stories of Tokyo and his Tokyo girlfriend and his repressed homicidal tendencies. In the rare times their various schedules align, he video-chats with the Phantom Thieves, who all seem to be thriving in their own little corners of Japan. It hurts that he doesn’t get to see them as often, but the ache from when he first left them has tempered into something more manageable. </p><p>He and Hifumi also continue to date. Neither of them are able to visit each other because Hifumi is too consumed with her own academics and shogi tournaments and college applications to find a proper day to come up, and Akira is scared that if he ever takes the long train ride down to Tokyo, he’ll step back out into its wide, restless streets and find that he never really fit there at all. He doesn’t tell Hifumi this, of course, and instead makes a passing excuse about his parents’ strict house rules.</p><p>They make it work in spite of that. Hifumi still seems happy, so Akira is okay with how things are going, too.</p><p>He’s finally slipping into what Morgana calls “a normal teenager’s daily life.” Morgana sounds happy for him when he says it. Akira just nods along, pretends he’s not bored out of his fucking mind most of the time when he’s not clutching a phone to his ear or stroking a hand over his dick, trying to not think about the last time he touched somebody. He tries to not think about a lot of things.</p><p>It’s been a little over 4 months since He-Who-May-or-May-Not-Be-Alive first texted him and then promptly fucked off to do whatever. He does his best not to nag at Futaba about it, who now has a life full of school and cramming and hanging around with Sumire and other things that Akira is sincerely glad to hear about. After all, it took Futaba three weeks to properly deal with the fake Medjed—maybe catching the elusive shadow of one 18-year-old supernatural assassin was a more daunting task, especially with so many other important things going on with her.</p><p>He just hopes Morgana doesn’t notice how much time he spends watching his phone, waiting for something that’ll probably never come.</p><p> </p><p>—</p><p> </p><p>Akira is dreaming.</p><p>This time, it’s just him and Akechi alone, standing across from one another. He’s not really sure where they’re at. He only sees Akechi, who’s dressed in the same winter clothes Akira last saw him in, hands shoved into his coat pockets.</p><p>“God, don’t you have other things that you dream about?” Akechi says, but there’s no real bite behind it. He looks more tired than he does hostile, the shadows under his eyes smudgy and bruised. </p><p>“I don’t really have much control here, I think.”</p><p>“You must have a very boring life if all you can think about is a dead boy.”</p><p>“You’re not dead,” Akira bites out, terse. “Don’t say that.”</p><p>“Oh, please, don’t suddenly sound like you care,” Akechi says, and he smiles thinly. “After all, you seemed to move on very quickly after you thought I’d finally died this time. How’s your girlfriend?”</p><p>Don’t bring her up, Akira wants to retort, as if he’s been caught in some dirty act, as if Hifumi is some secret he has to hide—which sounds ridiculous, considering that he’s faintly aware that none of this is actually real and that this Akechi is just a figment of his own unconscious mind.  </p><p>“Never mind, I don’t actually care all that much, frankly.” Akechi sighs. His body is facing away from Akira, the line of him bored, indifferent. “I’ve found that I don’t care about much of anything, really. It sounds so cliche when I say it out loud like that, don’t you think?”</p><p>“I think it really just makes me sad.”</p><p>“My, how insightful of you. Are you really the one your friends turn to for advice?”</p><p>“Why are you here?” Akira asks. He’s surprised at how angry it comes out. </p><p>“Oh, let me just poof myself out of existence.” Akechi scoffs. “Use your brain, Kurusu. I’m here because subliminally or not, you want me to be here. Just the way I am.”</p><p>“I didn’t ask to see you like—like—” The words aren’t coming to him. He waves his hand in a flimsy motion towards Akechi, who just cocks an eyebrow at him, unimpressed.</p><p>“Do you actually like the simpering Detective Prince? I suppose he’s appealing because I designed him to be that way, but I didn’t peg him to be your type,” he says, and then slants another sideways smile in Akira’s direction. It’s not meant to be kind. “I always felt like you preferred something less saccharine—tell me, would you rather me hold you down and tell you exactly how much I’d love to make you lick the filth off my boots? Is that what you want from me?”</p><p>Akira says nothing, even as the image makes his hands twitch at his sides.</p><p>“Perhaps I’m here because your brain is finally piecing together than I’m neither of those things,” Akechi muses, eyes glazing over at some spot past him as he speaks. “Maybe it’s easier for you to think of me like this instead.”</p><p>“Like what?” </p><p>At this, Akechi focuses his gaze completely back on Akira, no inflection in his voice at all when he replies, “Dead.”</p><p>It’s so odd, Akira thinks distantly. For all that he knows that this is a dream, for all that this self-awareness should elevate him past real feeling, each word Akechi says still stings like a sharp, visceral knife in his gut.</p><p>“I thought I told you to stop saying that,” he replies hoarsely, wondering when the twist of the knife will be enough to wake him back up again. “You’re not dead. Stop saying you’re dead.”</p><p>“Maybe it’s easier to think that I’m dead,” Akechi says, quietly. He considers Akira for another moment, expression unreadable. “Are you so selfish that you’d wish me dead than actually admit it?”</p><p>Admit what, Akira’s about to say, but then Akechi slides a step closer into his space, enough that something in Akira’s brain short-circuits to conjure up the burning sensation of warmth, of skin just cresting over skin. In his haze, he feels more than sees how this Akechi brings his hands up to frame Akira’s face, how his thumbs dig in just slightly into the curvatures of his cheekbones, and he wonders, fleetingly, if he’ll still feel the imprint of those fingerprints upon him when he wakes up. </p><p>“What do you want from me?” he hears Akechi murmur again. Akira’s vision is swooping into that rushing shade of darkness again, but he knows Akechi is there, somewhere near, holding him up somehow. </p><p>(I want you here, Akira wants to say.</p><p>I want you alive, Akira wants to say.</p><p>Some part of him knows that neither of these are accurate. The truth is much simpler, and one word shorter.)</p><p>He lets himself lean in blindly towards the warm memory of that breath, hoping to find his answer as he bridges that microcosm of space, and then—</p><p> </p><p>—</p><p> </p><p>He wakes up to his phone vibrating against his mouth.</p><p>“Fuck,” he groans against it, and tosses out a hand to swipe the screen and answer. He inches his head towards the speaker and murmurs out a groggy greeting.</p><p>“Yo,” Futaba says. “I found him.”</p><p> </p><p>—</p><p> </p><p>According to Futaba, Akechi Goro is not dead.</p><p>He is not dead, or being hunted down by hitmen, or hiding in the underground channels of Japan. It turns out that he’s not in Japan at all; he left the country the same day that Akira left Tokyo on a one-way flight to Europe. He purchased the ticket using one of Shido’s leftover bank accounts, which is how Futaba traced his steps in the first place. He stopped using the credit line a week or so after his first departure, and this would’ve left the rest of his paper trail blank—but of course, in all her cleverness, Futaba managed to track him down anyways and found that he enrolled himself in a work abroad program in Amsterdam, out of all places. For the last few months, according to her most updated research, he’s been working in small bike repair shops across the city. </p><p>“Not gonna lie, a lot of what I did was preeeeeeetty unethical,” she says. “But he kinda fucked over my life first, so I guess this one instance is fine.” </p><p>“So Akechi’s alive?” Akira asks, and his mouth moves formlessly around the words, as if he’s hearing them out loud again for the first time. Morgana is silent on the bed, listening to the call with him. “He’s okay?”</p><p>“Yep! And I triple-checked to see if anyone else’s digital footprints showed up while I was looking into his files,” Futaba says cheerfully. “So unless they could fool Alibaba—which, duh, of course they couldn’t—it looks like he’s been A-OK. I don’t really know why he hit up Amsterdam out of all places, but he’s been living there ever since he left. Also confirming that he <em> did </em> disconnect his old number, so that’s why you haven’t been able to get your little notes through to him either.”</p><p>Akira is nodding, even if Futaba can’t see him.</p><p>“From what I saw, he jumps between different locations for work, but I’ll send you the details in a more secure chat server.” He hears the rapid click-clack of typing from her end, and then a pause. “I didn’t really see him as an Amsterdam kind of guy. Did he ever tell you anything about visiting there one day?”</p><p>“Not really,” Akira says. When they hung out, Akechi liked to talk to him about things that seemed to just always be present on his mind: his work, his academics, his thoughts on philosophers and scholars whose names Akira could never pronounce. Sometimes, in moments Akira least expected it, Akechi would sip his drink and smile pleasantly as he told him about his dead mother and his tragically shitty adolescence. Akira usually took it all in stride, prodding Akechi for more details whenever he pointedly trailed off, staying quiet as Akechi’s face revealed more things about him than he probably ever intended for Akira to know.</p><p>Not once, though, had Akechi ever talked to Akira about what he thought his future could look like.</p><p>“Huh, maybe he’s finally taken the giant stick out of his ass,” Futaba muses. “But anyways, that should be the last of what I was able to find out. I sent everything to you under a different chat thread.”</p><p>“Thank you, Futaba,” Akira says sincerely, trying to press all of his gratitude into the words. “Really. I don’t know what I’d ever do with you.”</p><p>“Just another case of good ol’ internet stalking for Alibaba—which again, I don’t make a habit of doing because it’s definitely a little morally dubious, but call it a favor between fellow ex-Phantom Thieves of Justice.” She pauses, and her tone shifts into something more serious. “Akira … if it turns out Akechi doesn’t want anything to do with you anymore, do you know what you’ll want to do?”</p><p>He thinks back to Akechi as he last saw him, ordering Akira to let him die; to Akechi in his dreams, haunting him in every crevice of his consciousness. He thinks back to that first message on the train: not quite a goodbye, not quite the touching last words he expected, but it was <em> something</em>, and Akira was not the kind of person with the good sense to just back down and leave it alone, especially when it concerned Akechi.</p><p>“Yeah,” he says. “I think so.”</p><p>He murmurs another thank you into the speaker before Futaba hangs up, and immediately checks the series of attachments she’s sent him. It contains everything from Akechi’s first ticket purchase, to information on his work abroad program, to the address on his pay stubs. He should probably feel creepier. He doesn’t. All he feels is a strange sense of hope and adrenaline coursing through him as he stares down his phone screen, huddled in his bed at 2 AM, clutching the details of Akechi’s new life in his hands. </p><p>“Akira,” Morgana says. It’s the first thing he’s said ever since Futaba first called.</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>Morgana stares at him in the dark, his face drawn tight. “Do you know what you’re doing?”</p><p>Akira simply nods, not sure of what Morgana is asking him.</p><p>“Are you sure?” Morgana asks again, but this time, he just sounds resigned. “I just don’t want you to do anything impulsive.”</p><p>Akira rests his hand on top of Morgana’s head, and smiles.</p><p>“Trust me,” he says. “I won’t be reckless.”</p><p> </p><p>—</p><p> </p><p>The day that his summer vacation starts, Akira takes the first plane out of Japan.</p><p> </p><p>—</p><p> </p><p>Like many of Akira’s plans, he doesn’t remember actually making it until he’s well into its execution. </p><p>He gets off the plane with white noise humming between his ears, and somehow talks his way through in broken English and hastily Google-translated Dutch to get a cab ride out of the airport. He barely takes in how beautiful the city is, framed by an expanse of lush greens and oranges and reds. In the taxi, his eyes stay glued to the piece of paper crumpled in his hands, an address scrawled messily across the lines. </p><p>He ends up at the doorstep of an old, yellow-painted building tucked away in the corner of a street block. Everywhere, people are walking and talking and biking, and he’s almost as disoriented as he was the first time he got off the train in Shibuya, feeling like the world had suddenly expanded and burst into color around him. </p><p>All he needs to do is walk up and knock on the door. That’s really the crux of his plan, isn’t it? After buying that plane ticket, after getting onto the plane, after making it through the airport—this is supposed to be the easiest part, the most important step of them all. He doesn’t know why then that his arms and legs feel locked in place, why there is a voice that sounds annoyingly like Morgana whispering in his ear about <em> impulsiveness</em>, <em>recklessness</em>. Fuck. Maybe he should’ve just texted first.</p><p>Behind him, he hears the sudden stop of footsteps, a sharp inhale that is smothered quickly beneath the exhale of a sigh.</p><p>Akira freezes, and slowly turns around.</p><p>All doubt slips away from him—because Akechi Goro is staring back at him, glaringly, wonderfully alive.</p><p> </p><p>—</p><p> </p><p>“Fucking hell,” he says. “You never listen, do you, Kurusu?” </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. amsterdam</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>
  <em>“To be fair,” Akira replies gravely, “you never said anything about not tracking you down to Europe and showing up on your doorstep.”</em>
</p><p>  <em>Akechi just stares at him, his mouth opening and closing before pursing into a single seething line. “You are very lucky that I greatly respect the owners and employees of this business,” he says lowly. “Otherwise, I would stab you right here, right now, and stain the table with the filthy sludge of your entrails.” </em></p><p>  <em>Akira smiles without really meaning to. He’s giddy, and he can’t help himself when he says, “Promise?”</em></p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>finally got to up the rating and tag this w/ infidelity lol. cw for alcohol as well</p><p>  <a href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2RdE29uq5pXbHmjftTpuHn?si=j3w-bkHyTu6ym5E80QGTiw">
<strong>playlist for this chapter on spotify</strong>
</a></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>At first, Akira thinks that he has stepped into another one of his dreams.</p><p>In his dreams, and even in his distant recollection of memories, Akira always felt like he was clawing at some faint image of Goro Akechi: Akechi as the Detective Prince with his too sweet smiles; Akechi as the snarling, battered face beneath Black Mask; Akechi as he was when Akira last saw him, tired, wrung out, waiting for his turn to die. </p><p>The Akechi standing before him, alive and breathing and here, is nothing close to the ghosts he conjured up.</p><p>This Akechi has groceries piled into his arms. This Akechi is not wearing gloves, his bare hands wrapped around the handlebars of the bike next to him. This Akechi has let his hair grow and trail just past his shoulders, the light strands of it loosely pulled into a side-knot. This Akechi is—well, he’s fairly certain that this Akechi is wearing <em> joggers</em>, out of all things, and a long-sleeve shirt labeled with some Dutch phrase that Akira can’t understand. This Akechi is neither meticulously put-together or falling apart at the seams; this Akechi has lint on his clothes, stray lines of hair mussed against his face.</p><p>Astonishingly enough, he just looks like … a person. A person who doesn’t seem very particularly enthused to see him, granted, but—</p><p>The sight of him makes Akira’s heart seize up.</p><p>He thinks he moves his mouth to say something, but all that comes out is dry air. Akechi rolls his eyes upwards, seemingly praying to a God that Akira’s fairly certain he doesn’t believe in, before shuffling past him to the doorstep. He very carefully does not make any contact with Akira, lugging his bike forward as a barrier between them. </p><p>“Un-fucking-believable,” he hears Akechi mutter under his breath. Akechi twists a key into the lock and shoves the door open. As he’s about to head in, Akechi whips his head around to glance at Akira again, his expression flitting wildly through several different variations of frustration, hostility, shock, and then finally setting on something else Akira can’t place. He’s not even sure what his own face is reflecting back.</p><p>Akechi says, tersely, “If you move, I’ll kill you,” before slamming the door shut behind him.</p><p>After seven minutes of Akira struggling to find his breath, Akechi emerges again, still clad in his shirt and joggers. He looks less furious than he did just moments ago, his face now drawn into a tight blank slate. It should probably set off more warning signs in Akira’s mind, but if he’s being honest, it’s hard not to be distracted by everything else about Akechi, the solid realness of his presence, the way light is catching on the long, errant strands of his hair. </p><p>“Come with me,” Akechi says, inflectionless.</p><p>Akira follows a few paces behind him as they weave through the bluster of pedestrians and cyclists. Akira is gauging the chances of Akechi taking him out to one of Amsterdam’s back alleys and shanking him in cold blood when they finally stop at what seems to be an outdoor cafe. Akechi murmurs a quiet greeting in another language to a blonde server—who, Akira notes with hooded eyes, smiles brightly when he sees him—and they get seated at a table under the shade of a low umbrella.</p><p>They are left staring at one another across the small space of the table. Akira’s legs are long enough to bump against Akechi’s knees, but he keeps them tucked rigidly underneath his chair. Akechi says nothing, save for when they’re brought two cups of steaming coffee and he nods another quick thank-you to the server from earlier. He sips at his coffee silently, gaze landing on a spot somewhere past Akira.</p><p>Alright, maybe Akira should say something. He realizes that he actually hasn’t said anything at all to Akechi since he first showed up on his doorstep, and Akechi might just be waiting for him to stop being a tongue-tied dumbass and speak up. Maybe a <em> Hello </em> would be a nice start. Maybe an <em> I’m very happy that you’re not actually dead and I also like what you did with your hair, is that new </em>would be a good follow-up. </p><p>“So—”</p><p>“I’m going to ask you a series of questions,” Akechi interrupts, cutting off whatever half-assed greeting he was planning to improvise. </p><p>“Okay,” Akira says.</p><p>“You are going to answer them.”</p><p>“Okay,” Akira says, because if he replies otherwise, he can already see Akechi reaching across the table to strangle him.</p><p>“I’ll get right down to it then.” Akechi takes one long, deep gulp of his coffee, and then sets the cup on the table with all the gentleness of a guillotine coming down. “Do you know how to read?”</p><p>“Yeah, I’m pretty sure,” Akira says. He adds, for good measure, “I get top marks in all of my literature courses.”</p><p>“Oh, that’s wonderful to hear,” Akechi says. “Really, I can’t describe the overwhelming amount of <em> joy </em>I feel, knowing that Kurusu Akira is passing his high-school level literature class—”</p><p>“I would say it’s more than <em> passing</em>—”</p><p>“I don’t give a shit,” Akechi snaps. Charming as ever. “Answer me, Kurusu: what part of <em> Don’t text me back </em> did your feeble brain fail to comprehend?”</p><p>“To be fair,” Akira replies gravely, “you never said anything about not tracking you down to Europe and showing up on your doorstep.”</p><p>Akechi just stares at him, his mouth opening and closing before pursing into a single seething line. “You are very lucky that I greatly respect the owners and employees of this business,” he says lowly. “Otherwise, I would stab you right here, right now, and stain the table with the filthy sludge of your entrails.” </p><p>Akira smiles without really meaning to. He’s giddy, and he can’t help himself when he says, “Promise?”</p><p>He’s close enough to see how Akechi’s pupils dilate at that, how his lips part again, ever so slightly. That flash of openness is buried underneath another scowl so quickly and savagely that Akira doesn’t have time to process how it makes him feel, if it’s supposed to make him feel anything at all.</p><p>“Alright, let me ask another question,” Akechi says, eyes narrowed. “Who else knows you’re here?”</p><p>At this, Akira pauses, tries to rewind his memory back to a week ago.</p><p>On the long list of people he probably should’ve told, only Futaba and Morgana knew the real truth. Futaba found out because she was Futaba and knew nothing about the sanctity of Akira’s incognito tabs. Morgana found out because as Akira’s pseudo-roommate, he didn’t really have a choice; in those last few days as Akira prepared to leave, he had grimly tried to convince Akira to reconsider literally everything that he was planning to do, to no avail.</p><p>Either way, he had to bribe them individually to keep his trip a secret from the rest of the Phantom Thieves. For Futaba, he had pre-ordered her the remastered edition of the original Neo Featherman game. For Morgana, he had shelled out even more money on a whole tray of high-grade sushi, with the half-hearted promise to “actually talk about things when you come back because you’re stressing me out in ways that I didn’t know was physically possible for my species, Akira.” He was really just hoping that the ¥10,000 sashimi platter was enough.</p><p>(And for his parents—well, they hadn’t questioned him when on the day of his flight, he came out of his room, duffel bag in hand, and told them he was visiting Sojiro over the summer. Not that he expected them to say anything, anyway.) </p><p>The only person he felt any real guilt towards was Hifumi, who currently thought that Akira was on a summer-abroad trip with his family. Hifumi knew about the Phantom Thieves, of course, and the spare details around the Metaverse, but he didn’t think that his tense, complicated history with an ex-celebrity detective slash ex-teenage assassin was an appropriate topic of conversation to bring up, especially with the girl he was dating. He also didn’t know if he felt guilty about the actual lie, or about how easily and instinctively it came to him, or about how sweetly she’d wished for him to have fun. Probably another one of those things that he needed to talk about.</p><p>So really, in essence—</p><p>“Just Futaba and Morgana, I guess,” he says, finally.</p><p>Akechi pinches his nose, and breathes in deeply.</p><p>“So what you’re telling me,” he says, slowly, “is that the only people who know are Sakura, and your talking cat.”</p><p>Akira nods, even if he bristles a little in Morgana’s defense.</p><p>“No one else knows?” Akechi presses, and his voice takes on a strange, high-pitched note. “You deemed <em> no one else </em> important enough to tell them that you flew to fucking Amsterdam to knock on my front door?”</p><p>“Just happened that way,” Akira says, and shrugs. He’s not really sure what Akechi’s trying to emphasize here.</p><p>“You are—” Akechi begins to say, and then stops himself with a grimace. He pauses to take another long pull from his drink as if it’s a flask of vodka, and not the coffee with three creams and two sugars that Akira suspects it to be. </p><p>“Should I assume that you being here was Sakura’s doing, too?” asks Akechi sharply. He shakes his head as soon as he says it, scoffing under his breath. “No, never mind. Of course you found me through her. After all, how could I forget that Kurusu Akira has a legion of friends and allies at his beck and call for any favor he so graciously asks for?”</p><p>Something about the way Akechi says that itches at his skin. “That’s not fair.”</p><p>Akechi just sneers. “I didn’t think it was particularly fair for you to <em> ambush </em>me at my own fucking home, but here we are.” </p><p>His head prickling with the faint beginnings of irritation, Akira tightens his fists against his thighs, and asks, suddenly, “What would you have done?”</p><p>For the first time since he saw Akira on his doorstep, Akechi looks genuinely startled. “What?” </p><p>“What would you have done,” Akira repeats, feeling the words slowly burn and uncoil from some place within him, “if I’d died, come back, told you that I was alive, and then dropped off the face of the planet again without another word?”</p><p>Across from him, he can see Akechi’s jaw clench. </p><p>“I’m not that clueless. You clearly had a reason for ending things the way you did, for coming all the way here. But …” At this, Akira lets out an exhale, and he hopes it doesn’t sound as shaky as it feels leaving his chest. “I had my own reasons for doing this, too.” </p><p>Akechi swallows. It’s easier to see the movements of his throat like this, exposed and bare without the obstructing view of a scarf, or the high collar of a tie.</p><p>“So tell me,” Akechi replies, voice rougher. “Why <em> did </em> you come here, Kurusu?”</p><p>Akira cocks an eyebrow at him, and allows his mouth to crook up just so.</p><p>“I’ll tell you my reasons if you tell me yours,” he says lightly.</p><p>Before Akechi can respond to that, the blonde server from earlier arrives to give them refills on their coffee. Akira sees him sneak a glance at Akechi, who is still staring blankly at Akira.</p><p>“Are you doing okay here?” he thinks he hears the server say in stilted English. </p><p>Akechi tears his eyes away from Akira to cast a look back up at him, and gives a quick, curt nod. “Yes, Sven,” he says. He adds, more quietly, “<em>Dank je.</em>”</p><p>The server—Sven, he files away in his mind—gives Akechi a small grin back. He refills each of their cups and then leaves before Akira can pretend not to catalogue every detail of their interaction. </p><p>In a perfectly even tone, he asks, “So are you fluent in Dutch then?”</p><p>“I know enough to get by.”</p><p>“Do you talk to a lot of the locals in your area?”</p><p>“Please don’t try to make small talk with me,” Akechi says. He drops a liberal amount of sugar cubes into his coffee. “I grow more homicidal by the second.”</p><p>“You said you liked the people at this cafe too much to actually try anything.” Akira fiddles with the handle of his own cup, and then adds, more casually, “Seemed like you knew that server pretty well.”</p><p>“I come to this cafe a lot,” Akechi says flatly. If he detects any hint of prying from Akira’s end, he doesn’t make a comment. “The employees here are … friendly. The coffee is fine, I suppose.”</p><p>Akira wants to ask what the implication behind 'friendly' is, but he bites his tongue. He lets himself fall back into silence, watching Akechi across from him.</p><p>It’s still weird, he thinks, how none of this actually feels that weird at all. He thought it was the jet lag delaying his reactions at first, but at the moment, he senses no fog coming over him, no haze dulling the edges of his perception. Being in a foreign country, drinking coffee under the low light of the city, sitting here with Akechi and watching his too-long hair curl delicately around the sharp angles of his face, it feels—it feels like—</p><p>Well. It feels like <em> something</em>. Akira can’t put his finger on it, but it’s hell of a lot more than what he’s been feeling for the past few months. </p><p>“So what now?”</p><p>He blinks, refocuses his gaze back on Akechi, who is scowling openly at him again. “What?”</p><p>“What are you planning to do now,” Akechi says, enunciating each word as if he’s talking to a child. “Surely you didn’t embark on a 24-hour flight to just gape like an idiot.”</p><p>“I figured I’d hang out around for a bit. See the city. Chill.” Akira shrugs, lets himself lean back against his chair. “My summer vacation just started, so it’s not like I have anywhere to be right now.”</p><p>“Chill,” Akechi repeats, clearly offended.</p><p>“Yep,” Akira says. </p><p>Akechi stares at him. “Did you even book a hotel room?”</p><p>Akira must pause too long at that because Akechi’s face twists, as if it can’t decide between untempered rage or grim resignation. With the knowledge of having seen Akechi’s face do both, Akira wisely decides to stay mute and just sip his coffee. </p><p>“You are the worst fucking person I’ve ever met,” Akechi tells him, eventually settling on his trademark brand of earnest rudeness, so familiar that it makes that giddy feeling rise up in Akira again, unbidden. </p><p>“Right back at you,” he says, and throws him his most innocuous smile. “So is there room at your place?”</p><p> </p><p>—</p><p> </p><p>“Rule one: don’t move anything around.”</p><p>“Okay.”</p><p>“Rule two: don’t comment on anything.”</p><p>“Okay.”</p><p>“Rule three: don’t touch anything.”</p><p>“What do you mea—” Akechi throws him a scathing look. “Okay.”</p><p>“Rule 4: I reserve the right to kick you out whenever, and however, it pleases me.”</p><p>“Okay.” </p><p>Akira really wants to ask what he means by 'however' he pleases—but that seems to be the last of it, as Akechi gives him one last cursory nod and turns around to unlock his apartment’s front door. He seems to hesitate for a moment, his hand just hovering in front of the keyhole, before whatever comes over him passes, and he unlocks the door. </p><p>As they enter, Akira can immediately tell that it’s some kind of studio apartment. The kitchen and living room are clustered into a single room, the walls around them lined with old, weathered bricks. A set of steps lead up to a smaller lofted floor, where he sees a bed peeking out, clothes thrown haphazardly across the topmost railing. In the corner, near the window looking out into the street, there’s a wooden bench holding a stack of books and an open record player. He used to imagine Akechi keeping his space tidier, almost meticulously so, but the apartment they walk into has dishes piled in its kitchen sink, leafs of paper strewn across the coffee table, a bike propped up against the couch. </p><p>Akira thinks of his own room at his parents’ place, collecting dust, still and empty—and in that moment, he’s awash with a strange sense of gratitude, knowing Akechi’s home seems to be nothing like that.</p><p>He remembers Akechi’s second house rule and says nothing, taking off his shoes and following Akechi to the living room. Akechi points to the couch with one stoic finger, and Akira nods, sets his duffle bag on the floor next to it. He sits down gingerly, feeling the cushion yield beneath him. </p><p>“If you need to use the bathroom, you can find it yourself,” Akechi tells him. “Otherwise, you can piss and shit outside for all I care.”</p><p>“How considerate of you,” Akira mutters, but Akechi’s already stalking away from him and heading presumably towards his own bed.</p><p>“Akechi,” he calls out, before he can stop himself. </p><p>He pauses at the foot of the stairs, head just barely turned in Akira’s direction.</p><p>It’s harder to see Akechi like this, his back turned, the apartment cast in the darker shades of the evening. But he can tell how the line of him already looks more relaxed, more sinuous, less like a snake ready to coil and strike. Maybe that’s what coming home is supposed to do to you. He thinks he remembers a memory like that, somewhere, stuffed under the cramped ceiling of an attic. Akira wants to ask Akechi if that’s what he feels like, too, if coming home feels like collapsing your tired body into the spaces of something else.</p><p>He’s not sure how to say that in a way that isn’t a little batshit crazy though, so he merely cants his head and wishes him, “Good night.”</p><p>Akechi says nothing in response, but he hears a tiny huff of air as he watches him disappear up the stairs. The lights flicker out. </p><p>Akira slumps back into the couch and curls his body into its corners. He just barely manages to wiggle out of his jeans and throw a blanket over himself before his eyelids start to droop, exhaustion ebbing through him in waves. He should probably be less gross and wash up, brush his teeth, but if he moves right now, he’ll lose that warm, languid feeling in his muscles.</p><p>He winds himself tighter in the blanket and falls asleep to the soft shuffle of footsteps around him.</p><p> </p><p>—</p><p> </p><p>When Akira wakes up hours later, curled into a couch that’s too short for him, it’s to the sound of someone else’s breathing.</p><p>He mumbles for Morgana to stop being so loud before he realizes the spot on his chest where Morgana should be is empty, and also, he’s pretty sure cats don’t sound like that. In the ten seconds his body takes to come to, he registers that the noise is coming somewhere above him, and then ten more seconds later, that he’s in the bricked walls of Akechi’s apartment. Which, of course, means the next logical conclusion is—</p><p>It’s a bit jarring, to wake up and suddenly be one of the few people in the world to know that Akechi Goro snores. More than that, it’s also incredibly, deeply funny, so Akira stores it away happily as blackmail material. </p><p>He sits up and yawns, grabbing blindly for his phone. His screen is alight with some notifications, but he zeroes in on a few messages from Hifumi. </p><p>—</p><p>
  <b>(2:12 AM)</b>
</p><p><b>Hifumi: </b> Good morning, Akira.<br/>
<b>Hifumi: </b> Oh! I suppose it’s still even earlier for you.<br/>
<b>Hifumi: </b>I just wanted to wish you a good day &lt;3 I hope you’re enjoying your trip with your family. </p><p>—</p><p>There’s that pang of guilt in his chest again. He still can’t place why he’s lying to Hifumi, why it didn’t just occur to him to say that he was visiting a friend abroad. Calling Akechi anything close to a <em> friend </em>also seemed just as wildly incorrect.</p><p>He’s too far deep in now to rectify any of it, so he sends off a reply. </p><p>—</p><p>
  <b>(10:37 AM)</b>
</p><p><b>Akira: </b> yeah the trip has been nice so far<br/>
<b>Akira: </b> hope your day goes well too hifumi (:<br/>
<b>Akira: </b>i’ll text you later about how it’s going</p><p>—</p><p>As with any other time when staring at his phone imbues him with an acute sense of anxiety, Akira tosses it away and goes to do something else. He finds the bathroom tucked away near the front door and washes the day-old ooze of jet lag from his mouth and face. He grimaces at the state of his hair in the mirror, tries to comb it down flat with his hands. It doesn’t work. He glances through the bathroom cabinet to see if he can find anything to help, but he’s fairly certain that all he sees are skincare products labeled in Dutch. </p><p>Resigning himself to his fate, he treads back into the kitchen, humming quietly as he pokes through the fridge and pantry. Yeah, yeah, rule three dictated that Akira wasn’t supposed to touch anything, lest he suffer the wrath of Akechi disemboweling him in the streets of Amsterdam—but he’s hungry, and he isn’t that confident in exploring the city by himself yet to pick up food from elsewhere. Also, he figures that the nicest thing he can do after upending Akechi’s life yesterday is cook him some breakfast—pay his dues, as his parents would probably say. After months of mindlessly practicing recipe after recipe, he’s probably not the worst at it.</p><p>Akechi doesn’t have many of the typical products or spices he uses, so Akira settles on making a Western-style breakfast, crisping up some potatoes he finds and scrambling eggs on the side. He starts cooking a few slabs of thick-cut bacon on a skillet and an omelette laden with cheese and spinach in another pan. He cuts up some fruit in a bowl, because he can’t remember if Akechi lied about having a sweet tooth or not.</p><p>In the middle of seasoning the last of the potatoes and trying to whistle out the tune to some Finnish pop song Ann sent him, he hears footsteps coming down the stairs.</p><p>“What the fuck are you doing?” </p><p>Akira blinks, and stares up at Akechi, who is staring back at him with a supremely bewildered look on his face. He definitely looks like he just woke up, his hair pulled into a bun near the top of his head, sweatpants—<em> sweatpants </em>—tugged crookedly around his waist.</p><p>“Um,” Akira says, and looks down at the pans on the stove, the spatula currently in his hand. “Would you like breakfast?”</p><p>“Breakfast,” echoes Akechi, like he’s never heard of the concept.</p><p>“I made eggs,” Akira says helpfully. </p><p>Akechi glances down at the various plates of food he’s laid out, and then back at Akira. His jaw clenches.</p><p>“Your hair,” he starts, and then closes his mouth just as soon as he speaks.</p><p>“Yeah?” He tugs a hand at a messy curl, self-conscious. </p><p>“It—” Akechi swallows. “It looks shitty.”</p><p>He stalks away to the bathroom without another word. </p><p>After Akira cleans down the stovetop (and tries to flatten his bedhead down using his phone’s reflection), Akechi emerges again. He picks up a plate from Akira’s outstretched hand wordlessly and goes to sit on the bench near the windowsill. Akira follows after him with his own plate, plopping down onto a spot in front of the coffee table. He pretends not to look sideways at the backlit figure of Akechi, how the morning is making the stray hairs escaping his bun look red-orange in the sun.  </p><p>As he chews on a grape, he asks, “So what are we doing today?”</p><p>Akechi pauses, just as he’s about to spoon a piece of omelette into his mouth. “<em>I </em> need to go into work to finish up a project. <em> You</em>, however …” He trails off, and his face twists again. Akira hopes that he isn’t getting wrinkles from doing that so often. “On second thought, I’m not that fond of the idea of just leaving you alone in my apartment. You’ll come with me.”</p><p>Right, Futaba mentioned something about Akechi working in bike shops across Amsterdam. He wonders if he chose to take on this specific position, or if he was just assigned it arbitrarily. Fixing bicycles seemed like a long ways away from Akechi’s last job description.</p><p>“Sure,” Akira agrees easily. He’ll have time to ask later.</p><p>They fall back into vaguely companionable silence after that. When Akechi rises again, stepping in the direction of the kitchen, he holds out a hand impatiently in front of Akira. </p><p>“Your plate,” he says, when Akira simply raises an eyebrow, confused. He rolls his eyes. “You made the damn food. I’ll wash and clean up. I don’t take charity.”</p><p>Akira gets out a thank you as Akechi sneers and swipes the plate from him. He can hear the rushing of water from the faucet, the clatter of dishes, and Akechi cursing under his breath about getting soap on his clothes. </p><p>As he gets up to take a shower, Akira tries not to feel smug about how clean Akechi’s own plate had looked, with not a single scrap of food left on its surface. </p><p> </p><p>—</p><p> </p><p>The place Akechi takes him to is on a narrower street, squeezed between an antiques shop and a laundromat. The store display is filled with colorful bikes of all different shapes, sizes, some equipped with complicated gear that Akira’s never seen before. There’s greenery draped around the borders of the glass windows, ferns and vines unfurling around the front entrance.</p><p>When they walk in, the woman at the counter greets them both with a wave. Her dark hair is streaked with lines of grey, the tilt of her mouth warm, friendly. To his surprise, she immediately begins speaking to Akechi in Japanese.</p><p>“Goro, thanks for coming in.” She peers at Akira, who is hovering a few awkward steps away from him. “Is this your friend?”</p><p><em> Goro </em> , Akira thinks, but Akechi cuts him off with a sigh. “This is—my acquaintance, Kurusu Akira,” he says. Ouch. Well, it seems like he and Akechi agreed that <em> friend </em>would never be the apt word for whatever their relationship was. “He’s visiting from Japan on his summer vacation.”</p><p>“Oh, wonderful,” she says, and smiles at him. “My name is Mila. Welcome to Amsterdam, Akira.”</p><p>“Pleased to meet you,” he murmurs back, bowing his head in greeting.   </p><p>“My mother is from Osaka,” Mila explains, kindly answering Akira’s unspoken question. “I can’t write it very well, but I can speak Japanese well enough to manage. I try to go back every year or so, when my schedule allows for it. I was so happy when Goro started working for me—I’m usually hard-pressed to find anyone of Japanese heritage, particularly in this area of the city.”</p><p>“That does sound nice,” Akira says, slanting his gaze in Akechi’s direction. He is studiously avoiding any eye contact, shuffling through some boxes on one of the shop’s work desks. “You must feel very lucky to have him.”</p><p>“Yes, he’s very hard-working,” Mila says fondly, and then smirks. “Even if he’s scared away a customer or two.”</p><p>“That was one time,” Akechi says in an affronted tone. Under the lights, Akira can’t tell if that’s a faint blush crawling up his neck, or if he’s just imagining it. “He was a money-grubbing asshole who was trying to rip you off one of our best Azor models.” </p><p>“In any case, he’s an excellent technician in the shop,” Mila continues, winking at Akira when Akechi has turned around again. “But it must be so exciting to be in an unfamiliar city, let alone country! Is this your first time?”</p><p>He nods.</p><p>“Hm, I doubt my little shop is the most riveting place you could visit on your trip,” she muses, and then to Akechi, she says, “Why don’t you take the day off, show your friend around? I can take on some of your work for today.”</p><p>Akira watches as Akechi freezes at his spot behind the counter, wrench in hand. “I thought I was supposed to get the brake fixed on that Sensa hybrid bike,” he says, narrowing his eyes at Mila. “That bastard with the lazy eye wanted the job done by the end of the week.” </p><p>“Oh, I’ll be able to handle it,” she says loftily, and plucks the tool away from Akechi. He looks severely put upon. “Unless you don’t think I can repair a simple brake line by myself?”</p><p>It looks as if Akechi is about to open his mouth to complain, but Mila shoots him down with a wide, uncanny smile. Akira is already half in love with her.</p><p>She starts shooing them towards the door despite Akechi’s mutinous muttering. Just as she’s going to push them out, her eyes light up, and she darts towards the back of the shop. After Akira quirks a confused eyebrow at Akechi, who is still stubbornly scowling, Mila comes back out, rolling out two identical bikes at her sides. </p><p>“No,” Akechi says, immediately.</p><p>“You cannot bring your friend to this city and not take him cycling,” Mila insists, and shoves the bikes their way. Akira tugs one towards him, the steel of it cold beneath his hands. “You can only truly experience the beauty of this city with the wind in your hair, the buildings blurring past you as you ride atop a set of two wheels! I will not allow you to return these without knowing you’ve ridden on them. You know I can tell.”</p><p>“Blasphemy,” Akechi hisses, but he also pulls the other bike towards him. He curls his fists over the handlebars, and looks back out into the street, with the air of someone about to enter war. He sighs.</p><p>“Have a wonderful time, Akira,” Mila says warmly before shutting the door in their faces.</p><p>Akechi turns to him. “Please tell me you remember how to ride a goddamn bike.”</p><p>“Yes,” Akira lies.</p><p>“Good,” Akechi says, and nods his head firmly. He shifts his body to sit up on the bike saddle, and without looking back at Akira, orders, “Follow me.”</p><p>He takes off without a second notice, the abrupt breeze of his departure lashing out at Akira, before he realizes he needs to haul ass and clumsily pushes off after him. </p><p>They weave through pedestrians and cyclists alike as they peddle down the asphalt. The constant stream of people and obstacles looks daunting to Akira, even more so than in Tokyo—but Akechi seems to move like water between all of them, cutting a fluid path for Akira as he races ahead of him. He’s absolutely scared shitless, of course, but the fear fizzles away in the adrenaline blazing through his body, the air cutting across his skin. He almost clips himself on a trash can, missing it by just a hair, and he almost chokes on the laugh bubbling through him. He sees Akechi glance back, hair stringing around him, and he thinks—he <em> thinks</em>—he sees a smile before it’s gone, as quickly as it came.</p><p>They arrive at some grassy knoll overlooking a river. Akira’s breathless as he climbs off the bike, the ground unsteady beneath his feet. It’s a little embarrassing, how this is the most physical activity he’s done since his last stunt in the Metaverse, but he welcomes the familiar burn in his lungs, the ache beginning to creak through his joints, like old, forgotten friends.</p><p>Akechi, on the other hand, looks perfectly unfazed as he brushes his hair back into a neat ponytail. He props up his bike against a nearby tree, and once he finally finds the breath caught in his throat, Akira moves to do the same. </p><p>He drops unceremoniously onto the ground and lets his body sink into the coolness of the dirt, the grass tickling his neck. Akechi sniffs, but eventually sits down beside him, carefully tucking his legs beneath the bottom of his pants.</p><p>“You sound like an 80-year-old with asthma,” Akechi informs him. </p><p>“Thank you for that,” Akira says, folding his arms behind his head. “Not all of us treat a nice bike ride through the city like it’s a game of Mario Kart.”</p><p>“I have no fucking idea what that means,” Akechi says, because spiritually, he has always been a 40-year-old man. </p><p>Akira lulls his head to the side, observing him from his peripherals. It’s funny how every time he looks at Akechi now, another layer seems to unfold and unpeel before him. This Akechi looks almost as comfortable as he did within the spaces of his own home, the tension unwinding from every vertebrae in his spine. In the sun, his skin looks a few shades tanner than Akira remembers it being, freckles dotted sparsely across the bridge of his nose. </p><p>“You look good,” he blurts out. Akechi turns his head sharply to look down at him, and Akira hastily fumbles through his mistake. “I mean—the city. Amsterdam. It looks good on you.”</p><p>Akechi is scrutinizing him, the look in his eyes unfathomable. </p><p>“It’s nice,” he finishes, fanning a hand out haplessly towards him. </p><p>“I see,” Akechi says, even if Akira really thinks that he doesn’t. “And Tokyo didn’t look ‘good’ on me?”</p><p>“Some would argue,” Akira says, perfectly even, “that Tokyo Akechi looked like he walked around with a stick in his ass.”</p><p>“<em>Some</em>,” he repeats dangerously.</p><p>Before Akechi can threaten Akira’s life again in a doubtlessly new and creative manner—not that he would <em> mind </em>, per se, he’s pretty used to it at this point—he reroutes the conversation as smoothly as he can. “Anyways,” he says, ignoring how Akechi looks increasingly malevolent, “I’ve been meaning to ask. Why’d you come all the way out to Amsterdam anyways?”</p><p>Why’d you leave at all, Akira wants to really ask, but he’ll ease his way into that question another day.</p><p>“For the people,” Akechi says, in the deadest voice possible. When Akira makes no response to that, clearly waiting for a more honest answer, he sighs, and tucks his arms around the top of his knees. Akira watches him as he starts speaking again, eyes lazily looking upwards.</p><p>“At first, I just planned to leave Tokyo, and then soon realized I wanted to get the fuck out of Japan altogether. My life in Japan was—well, I’m sure as you’re well-aware at this point, it was a complete shitshow.” He scrapes a fingernail across the lines of his pants, his hand still starkly bare without the cover of a glove. “I was done feeling like this country had become my tomb. I wanted to see if the world was bigger and less … exhausting than I thought it to be. And so I came here.”</p><p>Akira stays quiet, letting Akechi fill in the gaps of silence and space between them. He picks a few pieces of grass between his fingertips, digging his hand into the ground as he listens.</p><p>“My mother,” Akechi begins. Here, his voice dips into something else, and Akira can see traces of the Akechi from the bathhouse, confessing things he never meant to in the heat of that fog. “My mother was the one who taught me how to ride a bike. She would cycle with me for hours in Inokashira, and tell me all about these places she wanted to take me one day. She said that the canals of Amsterdam were some of the most beautiful places in the world to ride your bike through. She’d never been herself, but she always described how free the city seemed, how open its streets were. Obviously, we never got to go together, but … well. I suppose you can’t fault a child for remembering those sorts of sentimental things.”</p><p>Akechi’s face is pulled into a careful shell of stillness. Akira slides his eyes away from the cracks that he’s already memorized, after months of watching Akechi try not to feel as much as he actually did.</p><p>“Before I arrived in the city with nothing more than a suitcase and few boxes, I found a work abroad program for expats like myself. I suppose in some ways I was fortunate to meet someone like Mila, who probably understood my … cultural situation more than most would. The last few months would’ve probably been a fucking disaster otherwise.”</p><p>“She seems very kind,” Akira comments quietly. He’s surprised at finding it in himself to say anything at all.</p><p>“Like most people here, she’s overwhelmingly, annoyingly friendly,” Akechi replies, but there’s no bite between the words like there normally would be. “The city in general is—accommodating. Open-minded.”</p><p>Akechi says the words carefully, as if picking them from the fine teeth of a comb. Akira understands without having to ask. He thinks about how his hometown had bullied someone out of his middle school for getting caught with another boy in his class, about the stoicness of Lala’s face every time she had to endure another cruel taunt or jeer in Shinjuku streets, about the way, even now, his own attraction outside of girls sat uncomfortably from time to time in the bottom of his stomach. </p><p>After that, Akechi finally stops speaking, and then blinks back down as if coming out of a trance.</p><p>Akira falls back into silence himself. He’s scared that if he says anything else, he’ll break the thin thread of whatever seems to be connecting them right now. Whenever moments like this happened between them in the past, Akechi would wave a hand through the air dismissively and earnestly endeavor to turn the conversation back towards the weather, or school, or anything remotely safer than the things that he’d inadvertently revealed about himself.</p><p>The Akechi of today continues to tilt his head up towards some unknowable distance, still not meeting Akira’s gaze. But he stays silent and allows the weight of his words to fall and rest somewhere near the two of them, untouched.</p><p>“Alright,” Akira settles on, and leaves it at that.</p><p>They watch a family playing with their child near the water, a woman reading a book under the shade of a tree, a group of cyclists whistling and hollering at each other as they pass through the area. Akira slowly exhales and wraps a thin finger around his wrist, trapping the sensation of the sun’s warmth within that slice of skin. </p><p>Eventually, they get up and cycle out again. Akechi wordlessly takes Akira through an exploration of Amsterdam’s connective metropolis, and he does as much as he can to keep up as they skid over the edges of waterbanks and squeeze through narrow tunnels. They make it back to Mila’s shop with sweat cooling on their necks, grass stains on their ass. Akira tries his best not to let his gaze linger on the dark marks on Akechi’s slacks.</p><p>“You look like you had a fun time, boys,” Mila greets them. “Where’d you end up taking him, Goro?”</p><p>“Places,” Akechi says, brisk, but he helps Mila roll the bikes back into the back of the shop. As she waves them goodbye, Akira hears him murmur a soft thank you before they head back in the direction of Akechi’s apartment.</p><p>“Also,” Akira says, remembering the faint thought wriggling in the back of his mind. “Does everyone you know in Amsterdam call you <em> Goro</em>?” </p><p>“You know it’s more common practice to use first names in Western culture,” Akechi replies, voice flat.</p><p>“So does that mean—”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“But you’ve called me by Akira before,” he needles him. “And I’ve known you longer than the people you’ve met here.”</p><p>“It’s not my fault that you radiate a cloying sense of familiarity with everyone that you meet. I, thankfully, do not, and therefore wished to be addressed appropriately.”</p><p>Akira pouts at him and relents, but he makes a note to call him ‘Goro’ in his head. He smirks to himself as he starts thinking about all the ways he can catch <em> Goro </em> off guard in the future by using his first name. It was only a matter of equality after all, as all things between former rivals were. </p><p> </p><p>—</p><p> </p><p>In the next few days of Akira’s summer vacation, he and his very good acquaintance Goro slip into a routine without really meaning to.</p><p>Akira cooks breakfast in the morning as penance for hogging Goro’s couch; they eat together; and then they go about their days. At first, Akira accompanies Goro back to his shifts at Mila’s, watching him tinker with greased metal and frown over very complicated sets of blueprints. As fun as it is to see Goro curse viciously at inanimate objects, Akira eventually decides to wander and explore the other shops in the area. It reminds him of when he used to spend his after-school hours in the underground malls of Shibuya, Morgana whispering to him in his ear whenever he caught word of an interesting bargain or two. He searches for some souvenirs he can bring back home, but really, he just relishes in how pleasantly aimless his strolls are, how he can still listen in on the casual conversations of the people he comes across, even if most of his understanding is limited to body language, effusive hand gestures, and some English.</p><p>He finds a bunch of market stalls tucked away in alley corners, so he ends up trying a copious amount of new foods, many of which whose names he can’t pronounce, but he savors every buttery, carb-filled delicacy he stuffs into his mouth. He sends photos of his meals to Futaba, and bafflingly enough, receives a reply back with a photo of her and Morgana attached. He’s not sure how Morgana ever managed to reach Futaba, but he shrugs it off, glad that they’re keeping each other company. He carefully avoids her multiple copied-and-pasted messages of “?????? so akechi” and keeps sending her a steady stream of food selfies instead. He texts pictures to Hifumi, too, who replies back with all kinds of questions about Dutch cuisine and architecture. He does his best to answer her, all the while dancing around the guilt in his heart.</p><p>Goro still complains about his perpetual bedhead, about Akira’s shit being strewn all over his living room floor. He hasn’t kicked Akira to the curb yet though, so he figures he’s okay. Akira makes Goro crepes without being asked to, and that also seems to placate his regular morning crankiness pretty well. </p><p>Their weird montage of relatively peaceful coexistence abruptly ends when one Saturday night, the blonde server from that cafe—Sven, he remembers—stops by Goro’s place.</p><p>Akira’s looking curiously through the box of records underneath Goro’s coffee table when there’s a knock on the door. Goro’s face blanches when he opens it to see Sven, smiling and dressed in a very, very sheer top. </p><p>“<em>Hallo</em>,” he greets in Dutch. He peeks slightly inside and grins cheerfully at Akira, who is very distracted by the way Sven’s shirt is hugging the lean muscles of his shoulders. He waves back, bemused.</p><p>Goro’s voice drops to a hush as he exchanges a few words with Sven in a stream of Dutch and English. Akira gets the feeling that they talk about him somewhere in their conversation, because Goro makes a few aborted gestures in his direction, and Sven nods, tilting his head contemplatively at Akira. </p><p>“Oh!” Sven snaps his fingers. “Why don’t you just bring your friend?” </p><p>“Bring me where?” Akira asks innocently, just to see Goro’s face contort into that familiar shade of constipated anger again.</p><p>“To the clubs in the city,” Sven relays to him in his deep, accented voice. “We go every Saturday.” </p><p>“Not every Saturday,” Goro snaps, and then to Akira, in Japanese, he says in a darker tone, “Don’t you fucking dare say anything more.”</p><p>Akira pretends to not hear him, and sorts through his knowledge of English to ask, “What kind of club?”</p><p>“The best kind,” Sven says. His smile is devastating. “Do you dance, friend?” </p><p>He thinks back to the last time he’d danced, soaring through a room with Sumire, his grappling hook hanging precariously from the ceiling. He doesn’t think this is the kind of dancing that Sven’s referring to.</p><p>But because Goro hisses out, “He does <em> not</em>,” Akira feels ever so inclined to contradict him with, “Of course.”</p><p>“Amazing,” Sven says, giving him an ecstatic thumbs up. Akira makes the same gesture back. He can see Goro threaten Akira in seven different ways through the murderous slant of his eyes. </p><p>“Fine,” Goro grits out. He says something else to Sven, and then, looking at Akira, jerks his head towards the stairs. “With me.”</p><p>Goro takes him up to the loft of his bedroom and immediately starts to sift through the dresser in the corner. Akira’s never actually been up here, so he lazily tracks his gaze through the messiness of the unmade bed, the dog-eared book on his nightstand.</p><p>Without warning, Goro chucks a shirt and a belt at Akira. The buttons hit him in the mouth. </p><p>“Wear that,” orders Goro.</p><p>Akira looks down at the thin fabric in his arms, a creamy white dress shirt with red thin stripes. “Okay,” he says, slowly. “Why?”</p><p>Goro shoots him that look that conveys how deeply of an idiot he thinks Akira is.</p><p>“We’re going clubbing in <em> Amsterdam</em>. You can’t go out dressed like—that,” he says, sneering as he gestures to Akira’s current outfit of a T-shirt and sweatpants.</p><p>Akira is a little offended. He was very proud of himself when he stole this Big Bang Burger graphic tee from Ryuji.</p><p>“Go change.” Goro turns back to sort through his pile of clothes. “It should fit you, given we have the same body type. I’ll be down soon, so fuck off.”</p><p>In the bathroom, Akira sheds his graphic tee for the striped dress shirt, the material fitting as easily to him as Goro said it would. He wiggles into the nicest pair of jeans that he brought and loops the dark leather belt around his waist, rolling up his sleeves and tucking in the shirt halfway like he’s seen some of those models in Ann’s magazines do. He swipes a hand through his hair to see if it’ll tame it somehow; it doesn’t. </p><p>Looking at himself in the mirror, Akira actually thinks he looks good. He’s never been the type to be truly self-conscious—ruder people would call him <em> vain </em>—but he likes how he looks here, like he’s less of a teenage boy with instant ramen stains on his hoodie and more like an actual functional person. </p><p>He steps back out into the living room where Sven is talking with Goro, already dressed in his own outfit. Sven gives him an even more exuberant thumbs up than he did earlier. Goro turns around, and his expression shutters off as soon as he sees Akira.</p><p>The casually chic clothes look even better on Goro than it does on him. He’s wearing a plain, shorter dress shirt than Akira, the sleeves hanging loosely around his elbows, tucked into a pair of dark plaid pants that fits him just as well. His hair is pulled into a small braid at the side of his neck. </p><p>Before Akira can say anything, Sven urges them toward the door and out into the night air. They pile into a cab where Akira is shoved between the two of them in the backseat, and he does not think about Goro’s bare forearm pressed against his for the whole 15 minutes of the drive. </p><p>They end up on a noisy street, the whole block filled with loud, outrageously drunk crowds of people. Sven takes them through the hustle and bustle of drunkards with ease, and Akira sticks close to Goro without actually touching him. They eventually come to a stop at the strobed lights of a club, the music vibrating Akira’s eardrums even from outside. He feels anxiety creep in underneath a much bolder current of adrenaline and anticipation, singing from his feet to the tips of his fingers. </p><p>Sven turns to him. He speaks as loudly as he can above the music’s volume, but Akira thinks he means for his voice to be firm, comforting. </p><p>“If you feel not safe, you stay close to me,” he says in English, and pats Akira’s shoulder for good measure. “I will take care of you.”</p><p>Akira’s brain short-circuits. Goro rolls his eyes, and translates in his own way.</p><p>“Someone tries to do something to you that you don’t like, you tell them to fuck off, or find one of us,” he says. His eyes glint at him. “But I’ve never known Joker to be an easy target.”</p><p>At that, they walk in and are swallowed quickly by the long line of men in various shades of nakedness, the noise pounding through the air. Sven pulls Goro who pulls Akira on his sleeve to the club’s main bar. Sven gives each of them a glass that looks like a test tube, filled with brightly colored liquid. It looks nothing like the sake or beer he and Ryuji once snuck into Leblanc’s attic, and he eyes the oversaturated concoction with dread. </p><p>Sven raises his glass towards him, expectant. Goro merely tilts his own shot of purple against his lips, the taunt clear in his eyes. </p><p><em> What are you going to do now, Kurusu?</em> he asks silently, and so of course, Akira answers with the same recklessness he has with every challenge Goro has thrown his way. </p><p>He downs his shot in one fluid motion, hearing Sven cheer something in Dutch next to him. It certainly tastes nothing like the cheap beer he and Ryuji stole, the shot tingling sharp and sweet in the back of his throat. But it feels just as warm and sinuous through his blood as any other drink he’s had, and he can already feel that hot flush of red start to creep from his neck to face. </p><p>They burn through more drinks soon after that. With each shot he slides down his throat, Sven egging him on happily, it makes the whole night flicker in and out in technicolor motions, the deep bass of the music shaking the very marrow of his bones. </p><p>He lets himself get pulled lazily towards the crowd of moving people. He grabs blindly for Goro in the meanwhile, tugging him close so he can whisper something in his ear.</p><p>“Ok, I lied,” he confesses. “I don’t know anything about dancing.” </p><p>“Are you already drunk?” Goro asks him mockingly, but he’s a fucking liar because Akira can see and feel the red suffusing his skin, too.</p><p>“I don’t go clubbing <em> every weekend</em>, so my tolerance isn’t as high as yours, you dick,” he says petulantly, and then groans. “Shit, what if I’m not good at it?”</p><p>“Think of it this way.” Goro smirks, all of his angles still dangerous beneath the effervescence of the lights. “Dancing’s not that different from fighting. That’s why I come here.”</p><p>Like fighting, Akira thinks. He’s not sure if he’s too far gone yet, but at that thought, he feels a little of Arsène come back to him, breaks his mouth open into that snarl of a grin, and throws himself onto the dance floor. </p><p>Like he would during any other Palace heist, Akira keeps his muscles loose and chases after the dark flashes of shadows moving before him. He thought entering the crowd would be like a car crash of a collision, and yet when he’s actually dancing with these strangers, their limbs tangling and pushing into his with easy familiarity, it’s more like he’s submerging himself into water, like the world is parting itself around him to accommodate the buoyant space of his body. He doesn’t know how long he stays like that, pressed against the sweaty monolith of people, if it’s for five minutes, or twenty, or an hour.</p><p>In the midst of it all, he remembers <em> Goro </em>is supposed to be here somewhere—his very good acquaintance Akechi Goro, alive and well and all too real that it’s making Akira’s head spin more than all the neon-colored shots he took. He twists and turns through the dance floor to look for him, and he smiles when he catches him off to the side, dancing with Sven.</p><p>His smile still stays like that, so wide that it hurts his cheeks, when he sees Sven pull in Goro for a kiss.</p><p>They look good together, melding into the other’s body like there was never any space between them to begin with. It looks like a motion they’ve done hundreds of times over, rehearsed, Sven’s hand tugging on the ends of Goro’s hair, Goro raking his nails down the sheer mesh of Sven’s shirt. They’re no different than anyone else in the club, running their hands across every inch of bare skin they can find—so why is Akira frozen in place here, trying to memorize yet another new version of Akechi Goro, the one that undulates his hips like he knows what he’s doing, the one that shoves his tongue down the throats of unfairly handsome Dutch men?</p><p>Before he even realizes it, he’s back outside. He stumbles against a few people as he walks towards the edge of the street. Someone tries to touch his shoulder, but he shrugs them off and calls out for a cab.</p><p>He gives the taxi driver the address for Goro’s apartment after five different tries. His phone buzzes in his pocket, but he ignores it, and squeezes his forehead against the cold glass of the window until the car comes to a slow crawl.</p><p>Akira’s sitting on the carpet, trying to sober up as his temples throb in minute pulses, when the front door slams open.</p><p>Someone, apparently, is not in a good mood. Which is funny, Akira thinks, considering how much of a nice time he seemed to be having earlier.</p><p>“Where the<em> hell </em> did you go?”</p><p>“Here,” Akira says, and in an echo of Goro’s nastiness, he adds with a faint sneer, “Obviously.”</p><p>Goro looks at him in furious disbelief. “And you didn’t think to tell either me or Sven before just disappearing like that?”</p><p>“Well,” Akira starts, and he doesn’t want to know what his voice sounds like when he says, “you and Sven looked pretty busy.”</p><p>Goro blinks at him, slowly. His hair still looks mussed from earlier, like he hadn’t had time to fix it before barging in here and tearing Akira a new one.</p><p>“What is that supposed to mean?” Goro says, lowly.</p><p>“Nothing,” Akira says. He smiles, and for whatever reason, it makes Goro startle as if he’s been slapped. “You guys looked like you were having fun. It was a fun time. Thanks for taking me with you.”</p><p>“Akira,” Goro says. “Cut the bullshit.”</p><p>“Actually, where is Sven right now?” Akira asks more loudly, ignoring how Goro’s expression flashes dangerously at that. “Is he outside right now, waiting for you to finish yelling at me, or threatening my life, or whatever it is that you do?”</p><p>“Sven stayed behind,” Goro says flatly. “And I came here to make sure that your ass didn’t get hit by a car.”</p><p>“How kind of you,” he says, and out of all things that Akira could’ve possibly said, this is what causes Goro to snap.</p><p>He hauls Akira up from the floor, nearly ripping the shirt he so thoughtfully lent to Akira, and slams him against the bricked walls. </p><p>“You don’t get to fucking do this,” Akechi snarls. His hand is balled into a fist on Akira’s sternum. “You don’t get to—to pull this stupid, jealous bullshit like we both don’t know what’s waiting for you when you finally get your fill here.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Akira says, struggling to push an exhale out of his lungs, “what’s that?”</p><p>Goro narrows his eyes, and says, silkily, “Your girlfriend.”</p><p>Akira freezes against him. “What—”</p><p>“Togo Hifumi.” Goro spits her name out with all the air of laying down a trump card. “Your precious <em> girlfriend</em>, the one who’s been texting you all those sweet messages the whole time you’ve been here with me, gallivanting through a foreign country.”</p><p>“How did you—did you look through my phone—”</p><p>“Oh, believe me, I’ve known about her even before you showed up on my doorstep like a lost puppy.” Goro sneers, the entire shape of him cruel. “When I came back to life—for the <em> second </em> fucking time, no thanks to you—I saw you with her. Holding her. Kissing her. I spent the first few weeks of my resurrection stalking you and sweet little Hifumi around Tokyo. I have to ask, were you ever aware someone else was watching you as you ate Miss Shogi Prodigy out in laundromats, as you took her against every wall in Tokyo? You’re honestly a little bit of a hypocrite, seeing as you’ve probably fucked her a hell of a lot more than I have Sven.”</p><p>Akira’s throat has gone dry. Goro keeps talking as if he’s not even there, as if he isn’t digging his fist between Akira’s collarbones, so hard that it nearly chokes him.</p><p>“Maybe that shitty therapist was right. Maybe I finally came to my senses because I realized my life was worth more than just desperately pining after someone who never wanted me around to begin with—least of all <em> you </em> .” He laughs. “Actually, you want to know why I really left Japan? I left Japan because after all those months spent trying to worm my way into your life, trying to fester at your side like a terminal infection, I <em> still </em> fucking hated your self-martyring, impulsive, pathetic, criminal <em>ass</em>—”</p><p>“Hit me.”</p><p>Goro stares at him, bewildered, and it takes Akira half a second to realize that the command came from him.</p><p>Well. There was no taking it back now.</p><p>“Hit me,” Akira repeats. He opens his arms wide against the wall, a mocking invitation. “You said you hated me, yeah? <em> Prove it </em>.”</p><p>It occurs to him, as Akechi’s fist meets his cheek, that this was the first time something like this had happened—just them, bare-fisted, with no other self they could call upon like a divine protector. Akira dodges the next punch, catching Goro’s arm in his hand and sinking his own fist into his face. As soon as Goro recovers from the whiplash, he knees Akira’s stomach, and the impact leaves him breathless as they collide against the wall, the coffee table. He can feel the raw ache in his knuckles as they exchange blow for blow, skin scraping against skin. When Goro reels his arm back to land another hit, Akira manages to sweep his legs and pin him against the floor, grinding the bones of his wrists together. </p><p>Akira is left staring down at him. The apartment is silent, save for the harsh rasp of their breaths.</p><p>“You have a girlfriend,” Goro says, like he already knows what Akira wants to do. He does not move.</p><p>He’s not thinking of Hifumi right now, which makes him the biggest asshole in Tokyo, and probably even Amsterdam. It’s hard to concentrate on anything but the sanguine drip of Goro’s gaze in front of him, as red as the blood pooling in his mouth. After all this time, he didn’t know why he found those eyes so compelling, why Akira felt like every time he was being stared down by them, he felt challenged to do more, to be more. Maybe Goro understood him better than he thought he did. Maybe he already knew the reason why Akira so often leapt before he looked—and here he was now, daring Akira to take that next jump.</p><p>“I’m going to kiss you now,” Akira says, and he takes the leap.</p><p>When he kisses Goro for the first time, it’s not the tectonic shift he expects it to be. His world does not tremble, does not feel even slightly tilted off its axis—it dawns upon Akira that everything that is supposed to be happening is happening here, in this moment. His lips slant against Goro’s in a wet slide of blood and saliva, and he finally, finally twines his fingers into the long, willowy threads of Goro’s hair, tugging them to push Goro’s face more desperately against his own.</p><p>Goro seems to pause, for the briefest iota of a second, before he meets Akira in the middle just as savagely, just as reverently. He pushes Akira up so that they’re standing, still kissing him with his teeth skimming his bottom lip.   </p><p>“Bed,” Goro grinds out, in between the space of their mouths, and Akira nods, lets himself get dragged up the stairs while keeping his lips suctioned to Goro’s jaw.</p><p>He loses that delirious connection of heat when Goro shoves him roughly onto the bed. He can’t say that he minds all that much though, not when Goro is staring at him underneath the lowlights of the ceiling, his pupils blown wide open, his mouth a swollen bruise. </p><p>“Clothes,” Goro orders in the same brisk tone. Akira obliges, peeling his jeans off his legs while also trying to watch Goro strip in the corner of his vision.</p><p>The mattress dips as Goro slides up next to him again, all warm, exposed skin and sinews, his cock a hard line against his hips. Akira reaches a hand down to lazily stroke him, and he fixates on how Goro shudders at the contact, how he leans into his touch even more when Akira swipes a thumb across the wet tip.</p><p>“So,” Akira asks, every word sounding like an open rasp, “how do you wanna do this?”</p><p>“How positively romantic of you,” Goro says mockingly, but he bites off another groan when Akira twists his hand around the base of his cock. “Fuck—I want to <em> fuck </em>, you moronic shithead—but I don’t know if I want to go through all of the prep work—”</p><p>Akira files away a note to extensively Google what Goro’s talking about later, and then jerks him off in harder, rougher strokes, because if Goro is coherent enough to keep insulting Akira, then maybe he isn’t doing this right after all. </p><p>He stills his hand, just as an idea catches on the edges of his hormonal mind.</p><p>“What the <em> fuck</em>, Akira—”</p><p>“Shut up, Goro,” Akira cuts him off, and he’s smug at how Goro looks just as surprised as he thought he would be when he says his name, how his dick distinctly throbs in Akira’s hand. He sinks down to the floor, crouching between Goro’s thighs, and smiles sweetly up at him.</p><p>“I’m going to blow you,” Akira informs him, and does.</p><p>Sucking dick isn’t all that different from eating pussy. Sure, the <em> anatomy </em>of it is different, whatever—but Akira moves his tongue in all the same motions, the taste of skin just as sour and heady as he remembers. Goro seems to like whatever Akira’s doing, given the way he’s cursing in a profuse stream of breaths above him. He licks a wet stripe up the thick underside of his cock, and without a second thought, takes Goro greedily into the hollowness of his throat.</p><p>He hears Goro make a sharp, whining noise above him, and his hips stutter in shallow, desperate pulses, as if waiting for something.</p><p><em> Oh</em>, Akira thinks. Alright. He can do that.</p><p>Akira reaches for Goro’s hand, and places it on top of his hair. He peers up at Goro beneath the low sweep of his lashes, watching how his chest is rising and falling in short gasps, and quirks a single eyebrow up as his permission.</p><p>“<em>Akira</em>,” Goro says. He sounds wrecked. </p><p>Because Goro has always been wonderfully, annoyingly attuned to Akira’s body language, he gets the idea very quickly. He twists his fingers into the tangled curls of Akira’s hair and uses that leverage to thrust his hips up, his cock slamming into the back of his throat. And, <em> ah </em>, okay, maybe this is where the real difference in Akira’s experience starts—in the way tears are springing in the corners of his eyes, the way every rough slide in and out of his mouth verges on mean, the way he can already imagine the sound of his ruined voice in the aftermath.</p><p>Akira welcomes all of it, closes his eyes and lets Goro fuck his throat raw.</p><p>When his thrusts start to get more erratic, Akira digs his fingernails into the sinuous muscles of Goro’s thighs and meets his gaze across the long line of his body. He hums, just once, and Goro comes with a hoarse gasp, his hand hard and heavy against the nape of Akira’s neck. Akira pulls away when Goro’s cock finally softens, his mouth making a wet, obscene pop when he slides off.</p><p>Goro drags him back into the bed as he’s wiping his mouth, their arms and legs knocking against each other clumsily. Akira’s about to make a cheeky comment when a hand wraps around his own dick, and he falls abruptly silent, his whole body jerking at the contact. Goro huffs out a laugh because he’s an absolute asshole, even now, but Akira can’t really find it in himself to snark back, not when Goro’s palm is working up and down his dick with just the right amount of friction and slickness, not when he has his face pressed against the sliver of skin between Goro’s jaw and neck so he can breathe all of him in. </p><p>“Is this what you wanted?” Goro murmurs into his ear, hand working in idle strokes over him.</p><p>“Well, yeah,” Akira grits out. He’s not too coherent at the moment, especially with the way Goro’s fingertip is scraping slightly against the head of his cock.</p><p>“Honestly, you’re not as greedy as I thought,” Goro continues in that low tone, like he knows exactly what his voice is doing to Akira, <em> fuck him </em>, but fuck, he also hopes he never stops talking like that, ever. “With the way you made it your mission to fuck in every filthy corner of Tokyo, I thought you’d be more wanton here. Should we take this outside, perhaps?”</p><p>“Don’t you dare,” Akira hisses, even as his cock twitches, traitorously.</p><p>“Maybe I should’ve made my presence known when I found you fucking your girlfriend after all,” Goro says idly, his hand still moving in that agonizingly slow rhythm. Akira shivers at the mention of Hifumi. “I used to jerk myself off, thinking about how you’d look in that moment when you were still inside of her. How I’d stick my fingers into your mouth and make you suck on them as you finished.”</p><p>At that, he smears the blood at the corners of Akira’s face and slides a wet thumb across his bottom lip. Akira lets his mouth fall open as he pants, and Goro apparently takes that as an invitation to slide two more fingers in, crooking them lightly into the hollowness of Akira’s cheeks. He immediately tastes the heady mixture of their blood and sweat, and sucks at the pads of Goro’s fingers without being asked to, lapping up every last drop of liquid he finds. </p><p>“Harder,” he manages to gasp out, even with how full his mouth feels. Goro’s eyes darken. </p><p>“Greedy,” he whispers, but for once, he does as Akira asks, and Akira moans at how all of his nerve endings scrape against the rough calluses of Goro’s palms, how that familiar white-hot heat is winding faster and faster through his spine. He comes, just like that, with Goro murmuring filthy nothings into his ear and Akira's voice strangling out his name against his neck.</p><p>They collapse fully back onto the mattress, facing each other in the dark as they each catch their breath.</p><p>In the back of Akira’s mind, he feels too tired to speak, but he still wants to commemorate this occasion, somehow, to tangibly imprint each detail in his memory so he can wake up years later and remember that all of this was actually real.</p><p>He tilts his head forward to press one last slow kiss against Goro’s mouth, and then his nose, and then the spots where he remembers Goro’s freckles dusting his skin. Goro says nothing as he does this, eyes fluttering to a close. Akira is thankful for the silence in ways that he can’t name, thankful that Akechi Goro is alive, that he is letting Akira hold him like this, that he already understands, without having to be told, all the words that Akira will not let himself say.</p><p> </p><p>—</p><p> </p><p>The morning after, Akira wakes up with an ache in his jaw and immediately notices that the other side of the bed is empty. He feels like his heart’s about to drop out of his ribcage when he sees the light peeking out from the bathroom. </p><p>He walks downstairs, shivering as the cold hits his naked body, and freezes at the sight of Goro in the bathtub, the tips of his hair stringing in the pool of soapy water. He doesn’t move, unsure if he should intrude on whatever this is, until Goro lulls his neck in Akira’s direction and gestures him inside with a crook of his head.</p><p>Akira carefully dips into the languid heat of the bath, sitting across from Goro. Their limbs slide against one another, the water threatening to spill over the edges of the tub. The air is heavy, almost suffocating, with fog and the scent of lavender.</p><p>Goro is the first one to start speaking.</p><p>“I’m not going to wait around for you,” he says, quietly. “I told you once that I was done letting other people control my life, and I meant it.”</p><p>Akira nods, his throat dry. He can’t feel how painfully he’s clutching at his knees underneath the drowning pressure of the water.</p><p>“My life belongs to me now. Not Shido, not Maruki, and not even you—it’s mine.” He can see the vulnerability slip in and out of the tight corners of Goro’s face, still bruised from the night before. “I remember saying once that I would rather die than let someone take my choices away from me again. I suppose that still stands, but at the moment, <em> living </em> for myself also sounds like the more agreeable option.”</p><p>“I’m glad,” Akira starts to say, but Goro cuts him off with a small frown.</p><p>“Let me finish,” he says, and he exhales, sending small shockwaves across the foam. “After all this time anchoring myself to others, I’ve finally made a life for myself, and I intend on keeping it for as long as I can. Even if—even if that means a life without you in it.”</p><p>Akira blinks, as if Goro has punched him all over again.</p><p>If this were any other person, Akira thinks they would’ve apologized, would’ve softened the harshness of the words with something kinder. Goro does not do that, and just lets Akira take the blow for what it is. Akira can’t even find it in himself to hit back.</p><p>Goro bridges the gap between them and leans his body towards Akira, his hair dripping wet behind him. Akira stays mute as Goro brings up a hand to caress his face, soap stinging the wounds still fresh on his cheeks.</p><p>“What I mean to say,” Goro says, rubbing his thumb over Akira’s bruises as if this is the most gentle action he is capable of, “is that you can’t stay, Akira.”</p><p> </p><p>—</p><p> </p><p>(Rule four: he could kick Akira out whenever, and however, he pleases.</p><p>Okay. So this is what he meant.)</p><p> </p><p>—</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>This time, he does exactly as asked:</p><p>Akira leaves him alone.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>—</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>After Amsterdam, another two years pass before he sees Akechi Goro again.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>-- EDIT: phenomenal, show-stopping, sob-inducing art of <a href="https://twitter.com/BottomClown/status/1345519771123646468?s=20">akechi bodying akira against the wall</a> now on twitter by @/BottomClown!!!! i owe bio my whole life. All Of It</p><p>-- haha. it's worth mentioning now that like the first piece in this series from akechi's pov, akira's story will also have a Good Ending (i swear). for now, his narrative just has to stand on its own.</p><p>-- some thank you's: shout-out to mari (erina on ao3) for helping spawn the idea of amsterdam; the picture of little goro biking his way through the canals will now forever live rent-free in my mind!! another big shout-out to my friend vanes for giving me half the music on this chapter's playlist (listen to "spectacular rival," it will change your life), and just feeding me good vibes all the time, always. and a final thank you to my irl friend for diligently proofreading through this 11k words of pining and depravity despite, still, never playing p5/p5r.</p><p>-- the update for the last installment of this piece won't be as fast, but you can follow me on <a href="https://twitter.com/span1shsahara"><strong>my twitter</strong></a> for any previews to come!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. homecoming, ii</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p><em>Was it the shape of a snarl? Was it the ghost of a bullet in your brain, lodging itself into your nervous system and altering the very matter of your anatomy? Was love sun-kissed hair, midnight flashes of sincerity, just as much as it was the contraction in your chest, that seizing, suffocating crush between the spaces of your rib cage?</em> </p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>(cw: anxiety, disassociation, panic attacks, not-so-great coping mechanisms)</p>
<p>
  <a href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7kJ7Th5gGklM7Qtc4e0lxd?si=W-ba0EpMSmy1dOMHDwtFTg">
    <strong>this chapter's playlist</strong>
  </a>
</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Akira is dreaming. </p>
<p>He’s standing upon a glass pane, the sky dark with twilight. He’s not really sure where he is until he sees Maruki, waving at him. Dressed in the stark white of his Palace outfit, Maruki looks just how Akira last remembered him: bloodied, glasses askew, beaten down to his bones but still standing as his final act of defiance.</p>
<p>“Kurusu-kun,” Maruki greets him. His smile is warm, even with the cuts splitting his lips. “How are you?”</p>
<p>“Good,” Akira responds, slowly. Maruki’s Palace is as disorienting as ever, color dizzyingly flickering in and out of reality. “Although I’m not really sure why I’m here.”</p>
<p>“Oh, I’m not really sure either! But it certainly feels symbolic, doesn’t it?”</p>
<p>“Symbolic,” Akira repeats, already dreading where this is going. “Sure.”</p>
<p>Maruki gestures for Akira to sit with him near the edge of the pane, and then they’re side-by-side, swinging their legs above a chasm of emptiness. Akira grips the cold surface of the glass to steady himself.</p>
<p>“So, Kurusu-kun,” Maruki says, perfectly amiable. “Why do you feel like your consciousness manifested this memory again?”</p>
<p>“I didn’t really ask to be here in the first place, so I don’t know.” </p>
<p>He’s a bit meaner than he should be. But as much as he bears no true ill will towards Maruki—or even the cognitive version of him in his head—Akira’s not really up for psychoanalyzing his dream within his dream.</p>
<p>Maybe if he jumps off the ledge, then he’ll wake up and not have to deal with any of this.</p>
<p>“Are you sure about that?” Maruki prods him. “You may know yourself better than you think.”</p>
<p>Akira grinds the flat of his palms harder into the glass. Funny. That doesn’t feel true at all.</p>
<p>“After all, it was only because of how faithful you were to your sense of self that you were able to defeat me,” Maruki says, kindly filling in the gaps of Akira’s silence. He was always so good at that, so deft at reading between the lines of what Akira couldn’t bring himself to say. “I’ve never stopped admiring that about you. If it were any other person, I imagine they would’ve had a harder time denying my vision of reality.”</p>
<p>“A reality where no one suffers,” Akira recalls. </p>
<p>“Yes,” Maruki says, soft. “Yes, that’s what I wanted.”</p>
<p>“Do you believe that was the better option?” The question is less rhetorical than the Trickster in Akira probably means it to be, encroaching on genuine ambivalence.  “An endless lifetime of happiness, in exchange for any kind of choice or freedom?”</p>
<p>Maruki snaps his fingers. “Ah, I thought you might bring that up. Well, I’m afraid that the <em>idea </em>of freedom and choice isn’t as simple as its reality. But I’m sure you’re well-aware of that by now though, don’t you think, Kurusu-kun?”</p>
<p>Akira’s eyes cut to and from Maruki as he tries to figure out a response, catching on the image of the two of them in the mirrors arching all around the sky. Maruki’s face shimmers against his in the trapped surface of the glass, their reflections fracturing at all the wrong angles.</p>
<p>“Perhaps it’s because you’re younger,” Maruki muses. “Perhaps I should’ve waited longer, and then you would’ve seen what I meant about this world being cruel.”</p>
<p>“I know that already,” Akira nearly snaps at him, because his entire time spent as a Phantom Thief was predicated upon that truth, because Akechi Goro was living proof of it.</p>
<p>“Not in the way that you know it to be,” Maruki replies, shaking his head. He places a hand on Akira’s shoulder lightly, turning him so that they’re facing each other once more. Akira tears his gaze away from the Palace’s mirrors to face another kind, the lens of Maruki’s glasses reflecting the image of himself back.</p>
<p>“When you realize the kind of choices that we’re really left with,” Maruki begins to tell him, his smile almost as sad as it was in that hospital room, hunched over the ghost of the woman he loved. The Palace seems to disappear around them, and Akira reaches out a hand to grab Maruki as he plummets away, the picture of himself slipping farther and farther away—</p>
<p>Maruki’s final words find their way to Akira as he’s free-falling, reverberating in the negative space of his own consciousness.</p>
<p>“—you’ll understand why it’s easier not to choose at all.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>—</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Akira wakes up, startling against a hand on his shoulder. The flight attendant politely informs him that they’ve finally arrived at the Tokyo International Airport. He thanks her in a daze, picking up his bags and shuffling off the plane. He is the last one to leave, and his steps echo hollowly in the deserted passageway.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>—</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>His jaw still aches.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>—</p>
<p> </p>
<p>After getting back from his summer trip abroad, Akira does what any good boyfriend would do: he sets out to find his girlfriend and tell her that he cheated on her.</p>
<p>His body takes him on autopilot from Haneda Airport to Kanda. When Akira steps into the hallowed halls of the church, the heavy scent of incense thickening his lungs, he doesn’t process why he’s actually here until he sees Hifumi, bowed over the same pew she’s always in, ribbon tied around the dark fringes of her hair. She’s as singularly focused as ever, so consumed by her next move that she doesn’t even register Akira’s presence at first. </p>
<p>She looks up when he calls out her name, and the razor-sharp glint of intensity in her eyes gives way to open surprise.</p>
<p>It’s almost endearing, how her face instantly breaks open into a small but radiant smile. Hifumi grew up similarly to Akira, taught to conceal her emotions neatly behind endless layers of placidity. She only truly let herself go during shogi matches, letting her soft-spokenness harden into the commanding notes of a general at war. Outside of that, these bursts of pure emotional candor were moments to be cherished, moments that he catalogued fondly in his mind, once upon a time, with every glimpse into her truest self.</p>
<p>Now, Akira just feels guilty.</p>
<p>They go outside and find a private spot in the church’s courtyard. Hifumi sweeps him into a hug, her long hair fanning around his vision. She’s whispering in his ear about how glad she is to see him, how much she’s missed him, how nice it is to finally hold him again—and all Akira can think about is the last time he was held like this, <em>held down like this</em>, the proof of those sins etched all over his body.</p>
<p>Hifumi pulls back from their embrace, frowning when she looks up at him properly. </p>
<p>“Akira, your face,” she says, alarmed. He hopes she means just the bruises. “What happened?”</p>
<p>“I,” he starts to say, and then squeezes his eyes shut. He can’t look at her. He’s a coward, he fucking knows it. </p>
<p>“Akira,” Hifumi’s voice murmurs. Her thumbs brush against the places where his bones are clicking and locking shut. He wishes that she wouldn’t hold his face like that, like he’s something made of precious porcelain. He doesn’t want to compare the kindness of her touch to the memory of rougher, sun-warmed hands, or worse, the person they belonged to.</p>
<p>The person who, unlike Hifumi, knew exactly how Akira wanted to be touched.</p>
<p>“Are you okay? You can talk to m—”</p>
<p>“I cheated on you.”</p>
<p>Akira opens his eyes, just in time to see Hifumi’s face break open again.</p>
<p>She lets go of him, takes a step back. Her hand is covering her mouth, everything about her delicately frozen in place. </p>
<p>“I—I don’t know what to say,” Hifumi says, after a long stretch of silence. </p>
<p>“You don’t have to say anything—” Akira hastily says in his own attempt at reassurance, but she cuts him off with a sharp exhale. His mouth zips shut.</p>
<p>“No, I’m trying to figure out what I’d like to say, not that I didn’t want to speak.” Her tone reminds Akira of the first time they'd met, when Akira was just a stranger to her. To be treated like that again here is probably the least of what he deserves.</p>
<p>“Okay,” Hifumi breathes. She wraps her arms around herself, and steels her eyes at Akira when she looks back up at him. He suppresses a flinch. “Why?”</p>
<p>“Why,” he echoes.</p>
<p>“I suppose I could’ve asked <em>who</em>, but I’m more curious about <em>why </em>you would cheat,” Hifumi explains, clinical, even when Akira thinks he can see her lip quivering. </p>
<p>He forces himself to keep his eyes open.</p>
<p>“I don’t … I don’t have a good answer to that,” he says, finally.</p>
<p>“There’s always an answer,” Hifumi says, but the sharpness in her voice seems to falter when she asks, “Did it have something to do with me?”</p>
<p>“No, no,” Akira says immediately, and he doesn’t know what possesses him to stammer out, “it wasn’t about you at all.”</p>
<p>“Was that meant to be<em> comforting?</em>”</p>
<p>Fuck. “No, I just meant—”</p>
<p>“You just meant that I wasn’t even a second thought,” Hifumi says, cold. “You just meant that when you decided to fool around with someone else, I wasn’t even a blip on your radar. Is that right, Akira?” </p>
<p>He’s shaking his head, every movement weighing upon him like lead, but Hifumi continues relentlessly.</p>
<p>“Did you lie about traveling abroad with your family? Were you—were you with that person the whole time instead?”</p>
<p>“No.” Shit, that wasn’t right. “I mean yes—I mean <em>no</em>, I didn’t lie about going to Amsterdam. I did go. I just got back.”</p>
<p>“And you cheated on me with another woman there?”</p>
<p>“I,” Akira says, mouth suddenly dry. He swallows. “Not another woman.” </p>
<p>“Oh,” Hifumi says. She blinks. “I didn’t know.”</p>
<p>She leaves the rest of her sentence carefully blank.</p>
<p>“I just,” Akira says, stilted. He’s never had to talk about this with anyone. He didn’t think he would have to, not like this. “It’s not—I’m not—I don’t really have a name for it, right now.”</p>
<p>“Ah,” she intones. She pauses and assesses him once more, unreadable. </p>
<p>When Hifumi speaks again, it’s with the same measured pitch she uses to secure a concession, to snip at the last strings of her opponent’s weaknesses. </p>
<p>“Was it someone you loved, then?” </p>
<p>Someone—</p>
<p>Someone he <em>loved</em>—</p>
<p>(Was it love, to wish someone back to life? Was it love, to chase them through death? Was it love, to cook them breakfast, to watch fondly as they combed down their bed head, to know what the bare strip of skin on their wrist looked like in the morning—to wonder, idly, what it would be like to wake up and do this again and again each day?  </p>
<p>Or no, was it this—</p>
<p>Was it the shape of a snarl? Was it the ghost of a bullet in your brain, lodging itself into your nervous system and altering the very matter of your anatomy? Was love sun-kissed hair, midnight flashes of sincerity, just as much as it was the contraction in your chest, that seizing, suffocating crush between the spaces of your rib cage? </p>
<p>Which was it?)</p>
<p>Akira opens his mouth a few times to respond, but nothing seems to come out. He can’t remember what she asked. </p>
<p>Something in Hifumi’s expression softens, right before it passes like quicksilver, and she’s looking back at him with that steely, unwavering look in her eyes. </p>
<p>Some part of Akira is grateful. He would rather Hifumi stare him down like this, calm and unforgiving, like Akira is worth no more than the gum on her shoe, than have to see that flicker of pity ever again. </p>
<p>“Regardless, you betrayed my trust,” Hifumi says, chin firm. “I trust that you understand how that’s inexcusable.”</p>
<p>Akira gives another quick nod. He doesn’t trust himself to speak anymore. </p>
<p>“Good,” she says stiffly. </p>
<p>It looks like she wants to say more, and Akira stays silent to let her. But she simply straightens her posture, tilts her chin even higher. Without another word, Hifumi pivots and walks away from Akira with the lithe, graceful poise that he would always remember her by. </p>
<p>If he happens to see the slight shake in the line of her shoulders, trembling finely as she steps farther and farther away from him, he tries his best to forget it. </p>
<p>It’s a kindness for a kindness. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>—</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Akira’s body moves again without him really meaning it to. It’s been happening more frequently than not.</p>
<p>When he arrives in Yongen-Jaya, Sojiro is sweeping down the front of the cafe. He raises his eyebrows high when he sees Akira slouch quietly around the corner, bags in hand. As Sojiro eyes him up and down over the rim of his glasses, Akira readies himself for another disapproving comment. He didn’t really have time from the airport to Kanda to here to shrug off the jet lag, or fix whatever the fuck his face must look like.</p>
<p>After a long stretch of seconds, Sojiro just sighs, and sends his eyes heavenward. When he levels his gaze back at Akira, there’s a familiar crooked grin pulling at the corners of his mouth, containing none of the censure or rebuke Akira was waiting for. He brings his hand to wave at Akira, and says, simply:</p>
<p>“Hey, kid.”</p>
<p>And at that, for no apparent reason at all, Akira promptly bursts into tears.</p>
<p>Sojiro immediately goes to Akira’s side as the cavity in Akira’s chest finally caves over, and he sinks down to the ground, heaving in through shallow breaths. Irrationally, as Sojiro rubs his back in steady circles, Akira wonders if he should’ve gotten treated for his injuries after all. One of the cuts on his cheek could’ve re-opened and gotten infected; there could be a blood clot, tensed and ready to burst, underneath one of the darker contusions on his jaw. </p>
<p>“Kid,” Sojiro says again, low and urging. “Just breathe. You’re okay. You’re okay.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>—</p>
<p> </p>
<p>(Would that explain why his face is still hurting this much, as though every wound is new?)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>—</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Sojiro closes down the cafe and takes Akira back to his place. </p>
<p>Futaba is out with Morgana somewhere, so it’s just them, sitting side-by-side on the living room couch. Sojiro gives Akira a well-worn blanket and a frozen pack of peas. Akira bundles the blanket around himself, even with how sweltering the house is with summer heat. It’s a nice contrast to the ice pressed against his cheek. </p>
<p>“Alright, kid.” Sojiro exhales, and lays an arm across the couch’s back. “You wanna talk about it?”</p>
<p>It’s Akira’s least favorite question in the world. But because it’s Sojiro, and because he asks it in such a way where he isn’t actually forcing Akira to say “yes,” Akira answers anyway. </p>
<p>“My girlfriend broke up with me,” he admits. </p>
<p>“Hifumi-chan?” </p>
<p>“Yeah.” Akira wraps the blanket tighter around himself. “I cheated on her.”</p>
<p>“Oh, kid.” Sojiro makes a low noise in the back of his throat. “What happened?”</p>
<p>
  <em>Amsterdam happened.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Akechi Goro happened.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Going back to my parents and my hometown and realizing that I hate my life when it doesn’t involve killing imaginary monsters happened. </em>
</p>
<p><em>Knowing that I’m still going to wake up and feel like this tomorrow happened, is going</em> <em>to keep happening, and I really just want to sleep because I can’t envision a future in which I don’t feel like this on and on and on and</em>—</p>
<p>Akira settles on a quiet, “I fucked up.”</p>
<p>“Language,” Sojiro grunts out, and the gruff immediacy with which he says it almost makes Akira feel better. </p>
<p>The room goes quiet again, save for the sound of Sojiro scratching at his goatee, contemplative. Akira’s skin still feels raw from where he’d rubbed away the tear tracks earlier. He tries not to fidget. </p>
<p>“So you know what you did was wrong?” Sojiro asks eventually.</p>
<p>He thinks back to the images fresh in his mind: Hifumi’s chin raised as high and thin as air; the staccato stutter in her steps as he watched her walk away, helpless.</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Akira says hoarsely. “I know.”</p>
<p>“Alright.” Sojiro nods. “Then I guess that’s that.” </p>
<p>“You’re not gonna lecture me?”</p>
<p>“Akira, I’m pretty sure you’re feeling guilty enough,” Sojiro says, throwing him an exasperated glance, and then a faint grimace. “And obviously there’s something else going on that you don’t want to talk about—I won’t make you, but either way, me yelling at you doesn’t seem like it’ll do much good. The rest of it just comes down to time.”</p>
<p>“Time,” Akira repeats. The word tastes funny in his mouth. “Sure.”</p>
<p>Sojiro must sense the doubt in his voice, because he huffs under his breath. “God, this is going to make me sound old. Look, sometimes, in life—well, almost always in life—you’re gonna fuck up. Screw up,” he corrects brusquely, glaring at Akira’s slight smile. “You’re gonna screw up because that’s just how things happen, and more often than not, you’re gonna hurt someone else. And whether you meant to or not, that doesn’t make them hurt any less. Doesn’t take away what you did, yeah? That person’s gotta go on with their life, with or without you. All you can really give to help that kind of pain is time. Lots of it. Or at least enough until it doesn’t feel like it hurt as much the first time.”</p>
<p>Sojiro adds, hastily at the end, “At least that’s how <em>I </em>see it, alright? If it doesn’t make sense, then that’s fine.”</p>
<p>It does make sense. Akira knows that there’s nothing else he can do for Hifumi, no magic spell to rewind what he’s done. He knows that one day, she will find someone more attentive, more sure of themselves, someone who will put their whole body into the act of kissing and holding her. She is the kind of person who deserves that kind of love.</p>
<p>Akira’s not really sure what kind of love a person like himself deserves. </p>
<p>“Do you want to see Dr. Takemi for your—” Sojiro coughs and gestures awkwardly to the pack of peas, cooling wetly against Akira’s bruises. “Uh, what exactly happened anyways?” </p>
<p>“Accident,” Akira says easily. He turns his face away. “Got clipped by someone on a bicycle. It’s fine.”</p>
<p>Sojiro grumbles something about looking both ways on the streets, so it seems like he buys the lie. He looks Akira up and down again, and sighs.</p>
<p>“Look, you know that you’re always welcome here. You can stay for the day, get back on your feet again. But sooner or later, school’s gonna start up again, and I gotta send you back to your parents’ before they come looking for you.” Akira doesn’t think that his parents would ever start looking for him, but he bites his tongue and murmurs a small ‘Thanks’ out instead.</p>
<p>Sojiro seems to hesitate for another beat, and then he places a warm hand on Akira’s shoulder.</p>
<p>He says, a touch softer, “It’ll get better, kid.”</p>
<p>Akira says, because it’s the only thing he can, “Okay.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>—</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He waits for it to get better.</p>
<p>Time ticks, ticks, ticks away.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>—</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>AUGUST</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Summer vacation ends. Akira can’t even remember when it first started.</p>
<p>He packs up his shit and leaves Tokyo, Morgana in tow. Morgana doesn’t needle him with questions like Akira expected him to. He nibbles on some Dutch treats Akira smuggled away in his suitcase, curls up on Akira’s shoulder and babbles in his ear about how annoying it was to navigate Japan’s metro lines by himself.</p>
<p>Morgana says nothing about where Akira went, who Akira was with. Akira would ask why Morgana is being so restrained—especially when he clearly had things to say before Akira spirited himself off to another country for the summer—and yet Akira can’t bring himself to broach the topic first. He wouldn’t know where to begin.</p>
<p>The train ride back to his hometown is a little different this time. His phone remains untouched in his bag. There is no text message, no glimmer of hope to set Akira’s heart ablaze again. The great mystery has been solved: Akechi Goro is alive, and he wants nothing to do with Akira. Which, really, that’s exactly what Goro texted him right before fucking off to Amsterdam, but it’s nice to know for certain now. As Morgana snores on the other seat, Akira stares out the window, waits for the world to stop moving around him until the train comes to a screeching crawl.</p>
<p>When he makes it back to his parents’ house, no one is home to welcome him, which suits him just fine. He’d rather peel his own fingernails off than have to endure any kind of small talk with his parents right now.  </p>
<p>As Akira flips the light switch on in his bedroom, he can see that everything is as he left it. Untouched, unlived in. There’s paint chipping at the corners of the ceiling. Dust speckles the top of his desk, the shelves lined with old souvenirs. </p>
<p>Somewhere in the closet, there is a single black glove, shoved into the bottom of a school bag.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>—</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>SEPTEMBER</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>(4:48 PM) </strong>— <strong>2 SEPTEMBER</strong></p>
<p><strong>Yusuke: </strong>Greetings, Akira. I hope the first day of the semester went well for you.<br/><strong>Yusuke: </strong>I had the opportunity to chat with Togo-san today. We had the most riveting conversation about the quality of wood used to craft shogi pieces. Did you know that each type of wood has its own flavor palate? It’s remarkable.<br/><strong>Yusuke: </strong>In any case, she also informed me that the two of you parted ways. Romantically speaking.<br/><strong>Yusuke: </strong>Are you alright?<br/><strong>Akira: </strong>yusuke<br/><strong>Akira: </strong>did you mean to private message me<br/><strong>Ann: </strong>akira!!!! 🥺  let us know if u need anything yeah?<br/><strong>Ryuji: </strong>damn fr dude that sucks <br/><strong>Makoto: </strong>I’m sorry to hear that, Akira. Please don’t hesitate to ask if you need someone to talk with.<br/><strong>Haru: </strong>Aw, you two were so sweet together! I hope that everything turns out the best for both you and Hifumi-chan though 💕<br/><strong>Akira: </strong>thanks guys<br/><strong>Akira: </strong>i’m fine<br/><strong>Akira: </strong>ok that doesn’t sound like i’m fine but<br/><strong>Akira: </strong>it just happened like that<br/><strong>Ryuji: </strong>yeah :/<br/><strong>Ryuji:</strong> it be like that bro. i get it for sure<br/><strong>Haru: </strong>Ryuji! I didn’t know you had any experience with dating.<br/><strong>Ryuji: </strong>uh<br/><strong>Ryuji: </strong>i don’t<br/><strong>Haru: </strong><strong>😶</strong>  Ah.<br/><strong>Ryuji: </strong>huh<br/><strong>Yusuke: </strong>Oh. My apologies for not sending this privately.<br/><strong>Yusuke: </strong>Would you like me to send you a picture of my lunch from earlier today? I procured an udon bowl from one of those Shibuya vendors you told me about. The shapes of the noodles were exquisite. <br/><strong>Akira: </strong>yeah<br/><strong>Akira: </strong>that would be nice yusuke </p>
<p>—</p>
<p><strong>(4:55 PM) </strong>— <strong>2 SEPTEMBER</strong></p>
<p><strong>Futaba: </strong>hello it is i, alibaba, keeper of secrets, purveyor of knowledge, oracle of humanity <br/><strong>Futaba: </strong>i come to you, young mortal<br/><strong>Futaba: </strong>with the obligatory<br/><strong>Futaba: </strong>“Do you want to talk about it.”<br/><strong>Akira: </strong>no<br/><strong>Futaba: </strong>┌∩┐(◣_◢)┌∩┐<br/><strong>Futaba: </strong>ok anyways sorry about u and ur gf. sounds messy. but like<br/><strong>Futaba: </strong>did smth happen between u and akechi in the sensual streets of amsterdam or<br/><strong>Akira: </strong>or<br/><strong>Futaba: </strong>answer you fool<br/><strong>Akira: </strong>he kicked me out<br/><strong>Futaba: </strong>????? just like that<br/><strong>Akira: </strong>we hung out for a bit and then he told me i should go<br/><strong>Akira: </strong>i couldn’t really say no <br/><strong>Futaba: </strong>didnt i give u his new phone number so u could. yknow. perhaps <br/><strong>Futaba: </strong>talk to him<br/><strong>Futaba: </strong>instead of doing…...this <br/><strong>Akira: </strong>yeah. but i’m okay<br/><strong>Akira: </strong>he definitely wants to be left alone so. i’ll just do that<br/><strong>Futaba: </strong>akechi goro wants nothing to do with u, kurusu akira<br/><strong>Akira: </strong>yeah <br/><strong>Futaba: </strong>akechi goro wants nothing to do with u, kurusu akira<br/><strong>Akira: </strong>yeah<br/><strong>Futaba: </strong>akechi goro<br/><strong>Akira: </strong>has his own life now<br/><strong>Akira: </strong>doesn’t need me <br/><strong>Akira: </strong>at least he isn’t a hitman anymore so <br/><strong>Akira: </strong>good for him<br/><strong>Futaba: </strong>[...]<br/><strong>Futaba: ●</strong><strong>︿</strong><strong>●</strong></p>
<p>—</p>
<p><strong>(11:56 PM) </strong>— <strong>2 SEPTEMBER</strong></p>
<p><strong>Ryuji: </strong>what do u think haru meant earlier like<br/><strong>Ryuji: </strong>was that a diss?????<br/><strong>Akira: </strong>go to sleep ryuji<br/><strong>Ryuji: </strong>yea yea u right<br/><strong>Ryuji: </strong>feel better bro 👊</p>
<p> </p>
<p>—</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>OCTOBER</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It’s probably stupid, but after everything that happened, Akira still can’t tell if Goro even liked him. </p>
<p>Akira’s sure that Goro didn’t actually <em>hate</em> him, no matter how many times Goro tried to convey that sentiment with as much scathing vitriol as possible. Goro said that he hated Akira as often as he’d visited him at Leblanc, holing up in the cafe long past closing hours, simply for the pleasure of talking about philosophy with Akira, reviewing his detective work with Akira, showing off his chess skills with Akira. Leblanc was the last place Akira and Goro had talked before—well, before. No one liked coffee that much.  </p>
<p>And yet—if Akira didn’t have Goro’s hatred, what did he really have? </p>
<p>He tries to come up with a different answer whenever he inevitably returns to the question. He can’t remember if Goro’s mouth had tilted just so when they talked that one time over breakfast, or if Goro’s hand had lingered a touch too long on Akira’s wrist when he served him his drink. On his quiet walks around town, he combs over each memory, picking and prying at the edges, trying to figure out what’s real and what’s not. </p>
<p>Was it friendship he gleaned? Distant fondness? Tolerance? </p>
<p>Would it be so terrible if Akira wanted none of these things?</p>
<p>When he’s in the shower, itching in all the places he wants to be touched, his mind wanders to other memories. As Akira jerks a hand over his dick, he summons the ghost of a breath panting in his ear, strangled gasps sticky in the air. He imagines being worked open even more against the cold tile, a hand meanly pulling at the strands of his wet hair, that rough, low voice telling him how good Akira was being, how perfectly he was taking him in, how he couldn’t wait for Akira to fuck and ruin him in all the same ways—</p>
<p>When Akira comes, any name that leaves his mouth is swallowed by the scalding heat of the water. His skin burns. Itches.</p>
<p>Maybe that’s what it was, what Akira was to Goro: nothing more than the itch that he finally got to scratch. Akira was just a simple, irritating curiosity that burrowed beneath Goro’s skin one too many times, and it took a single fuck to get Akira out of his system like a bad rash.</p>
<p>And now? Now, Goro gets to happily move on and have sex with obscenely handsome Dutch men and create a life for himself that he deserves—away from his father, away from Tokyo, away from Akira. </p>
<p>Maybe this is what it means. To be free. To choose. Maybe this is what they fought for after all. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>—</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>NOVEMBER</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Akira,” his mother says one day. She’s leaning against the frame of his doorway, as lovely and sharp as always. Her earrings glint in the light. “Have you thought about where you’d like to apply to college?”</p>
<p>No. “Yes,” he says.</p>
<p>“Good.” She nods. “Don’t let yourself get distracted. This is a pivotal moment in your life. It seems like you’ve recovered from—last year, yes?”</p>
<p>“Yes,” he says.</p>
<p>“Very few people get the second chances in life that you do, Akira,” she says. “Things could have happened very differently for you. I hope you understand how fortunate you are.” </p>
<p>“Yes,” he says.</p>
<p>She stares at him. Akira stares back. His fingers twitch, and he suppresses the instinct to fiddle with glasses that are no longer on his face. This conversation would be easier with them on.</p>
<p>“Is that all you wanted to say,” he gets out, after a silence that feels longer than it actually is. He hopes he sounds polite. It’s hard to tell over the low ringing in his ears. </p>
<p>“Yes,” his mother says, and leaves.</p>
<p>The static in his ears doesn’t go with her, and it doesn’t stop until Morgana paws gently at his hands. He didn’t realize that they were shaking.</p>
<p>“Akira,” Morgana says, tired.</p>
<p>“I’m going on a walk,” he says, and then he leaves, too.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>—</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>DECEMBER</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>(12:02 AM) </strong>— <strong>7 DECEMBER</strong></p>
<p><strong>Akira: </strong>hey haru <br/><strong>Akira: </strong>can you send me your recipe for that toffee cake you made last year<br/><strong>Haru: </strong>Of course! Are you baking something tomorrow?<br/><strong>Akira: </strong>no i’m baking now<br/><strong>Haru: </strong>This late?<br/><strong>Akira: </strong>yep<br/><strong>Haru: </strong>Well, I guess it’s never too late for 🍰 !<br/><strong>Haru: </strong>I’ll send you my notes for the recipe after I brush my teeth. Text me a picture when it’s done 😊  And be sure to get some sleep!<br/><strong>Akira: </strong>of course. thanks haru </p>
<p>—</p>
<p><strong>(3:21 AM)  </strong>— <strong>13 DECEMBER</strong></p>
<p><strong>Ann: </strong>i know ur probs sleeping<br/><strong>Ann: </strong>but check out this song one of my american friends showed me!! [<a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/4YBDSEzVNQbvCvVIWNtruF?si=71I_KbOkRfudh8XCKfL_qg">https://open.spotify.com/track/4YBDSEzVNQbvCvVIWNtruF?si=71I_KbOkRfudh8XCKfL_qg</a>]<br/><strong>Ann: </strong>it’s a little depressing! but like in a good way ya know <br/><strong>Akira: </strong>oh yeah <br/><strong>Akira: </strong>i like the bassline a lot<br/><strong>Ann: </strong>right ugh <br/><strong>Ann: </strong>wait huh why r u up? isn’t it like 3 am over there rn<br/><strong>Akira: </strong>something like that<br/><strong>Ann: </strong>go to sleep 😡<br/><strong>Akira: </strong>i like the song though<br/><strong>Akira: </strong>i’ll listen to the rest of the album<br/><strong>Ann: </strong>akira 😡</p>
<p>—</p>
<p><strong>(6:17 AM) </strong>— <strong>19 DECEMBER</strong></p>
<p><strong>Akira: </strong>[<em>IMG_2020.JPG</em>]<br/><strong>Akira: </strong>look at mona. doesn’t he look dumb in this elf hat<br/><strong>Futaba: </strong>he does look pretty dumb lol<br/><strong>Futaba:</strong> but i can’t tell <br/><strong>Futaba: </strong>if u just woke up<br/><strong>Futaba: </strong>or if you’ve been up all night<br/><strong>Akira: </strong>i could ask you the same<br/><strong>Futaba: </strong>goodbye</p>
<p> </p>
<p>—</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>JANUARY</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>January is—well.</p>
<p>At the start of the new year, Akira decides that he’s getting sick of the same sallow scenery, the same sad wank sessions, and tries to recall the last time he didn’t feel like this. He takes the train down to Tokyo one weekend with the inkling of an idea in mind. He tells Morgana that he’ll be back the next day.</p>
<p>When he steps out into Shinjuku, streets lit with a red, dreamy haze, he stamps down the instinct to go to Chihaya’s booth, and heads in the direction Lala and Ohya always warned him to avoid after his late-night shifts at Crossroads.</p>
<p>Out on that neon strip, packed to the brim with noise and people, it’s not particularly hard to evade bouncers and slip into a busy nightclub. Idly, Akira wonders when it’ll ever <em>not </em>be hard, tracing the steps of others’ shadows like he was a liquid extension of them. He slides into a seat and tosses the bartender a smile. Akira’s charm is enough to earn him a free drink on the house, and then another, and then more shots than he can count, because he starts directing his smirk towards other people at the bar. He doesn’t remember any of their faces, but that’s fine. They seem to remember him well enough. </p>
<p>When he’s finally swallowed into the warmth of the dance floor, with however many drinks burning in his bloodstream, Akira remembers why he’s here. The space around his body, narrowed down to the thin separation of clothes between him and the person next to him; the strange hands catching on his swaying hips; the way Akira welcomes it all, eyes closed, like a heady rush of blood to the cheeks.</p>
<p>It’s the least lonely he’s felt in months. </p>
<p>The stranger he’s currently grinding up against is friendly and has a wide, toothy grin. Akira likes how their long hair strings between Akira’s fingers as they’re dancing. It makes it easier to tug them into the club bathroom with Akira, to drag them unceremoniously into an empty stall with their mouths hot against each other. Akira licks a wet stripe down Long Hair’s neck, relishing in how they shiver beneath him. He should really ask for their name, but then a hand’s palming at his crotch, his dick pressing hard against the seam of his jeans, and he instinctively thrusts his hips up at the contact. There’s hair tangling between his fingers, soft and flowing in his vision. This is good, he thinks. This is what he wanted. This is what he was trying to remember.</p>
<p>And then Long Hair brings up a hand to caress his face, and Akira flinches so hard that his head knocks against the wall.</p>
<p>“Oh, shit,” he hears the wrong voice say. “You good?”</p>
<p>Music is pounding outside the bathroom. His head hurts, vaguely.</p>
<p>“Yeah,” he says. “Sorry. Got punched in the face a while ago. Still hurts.”</p>
<p>“Oh, you poor thing,” Long Hair croons. “Want me to kiss it better?”</p>
<p>When their hand reaches out towards him again, it’s not Akira who catches it, fingers sliding against the place where their pulse beats—it’s Joker, with his low voice, his steady grip.  </p>
<p>“You can touch me,” Joker says, husky, “when I say you can touch me.” </p>
<p>He drops to his knees. Everything happens very quickly after that.</p>
<p>Akira means for it to be a one-time incident, coming back to his parents’ with the taste of someone else’s skin and sweat and cum sticking to his tongue. But then next weekend comes around, and he’s in a different club with the same kind of people dancing around him, the same kind of people who push him up against shitty bathroom walls, darkened alley ways, who fuck Akira in all the ways he lets them. </p>
<p>When Akira comes back for the third week in a row with bite marks on his ass, Morgana gives out one long, beleaguered sigh. </p>
<p>“Shouldn’t you be doing what normal high schoolers do?” Morgana pleads. “Don’t you have entrance exams to study for?”</p>
<p>“I do,” Akira says. “But I study on the weekdays, you know that.”</p>
<p>“Is this even legal,” Morgana says, even more despairing.</p>
<p>“No,” Akira says. “But it wasn’t legal to go into the Metaverse and steal people’s hearts either, so.”</p>
<p>“Are you even being <em>safe </em>with these strang—”</p>
<p>Akira starts bopping Morgana’s head at this point, because he doesn’t feel like being lectured on safe sex by his cat. Morgana bites his hand for that, which is substantially better than the alternative scenario.</p>
<p>“Don’t worry,” Akira says, even if Morgana definitely does not look capable of doing so at the moment. “I texted Takemi about it.”</p>
<p>Morgana still complains when Akira gets ready for yet another weekend of Shinjuku and dancing and trying not to see someone else’s face in the restless crowd. Akira promises to get him sushi when he comes back. </p>
<p>“Just be careful,” Morgana grumbles, and then leaves to wander the town, or to do whatever he does when Akira’s trying to get his dick touched. </p>
<p>Akira takes the train down to Shinjuku. He lets his body slip into all the familiar motions and gets pulled by another stranger who inevitably catches his eye. Everything goes as it has before, the empty spaces in his head wiped out by that overwhelming thrum of pleasure, but when it’s done, and he’s staring at himself in the dirty bathroom mirror to see if he got any cum in his hair, Stranger Number Four tries to talk to him.</p>
<p>“So who’s <em>Goro</em>?”</p>
<p>He freezes. “What?”</p>
<p>“Goro,” Stranger Number Four repeats, not unkindly. “That’s the name you called me by.”</p>
<p>Akira knocks his brain for memories of the last twenty minutes.</p>
<p>“Did I,” he says faintly, when nothing stirs beyond the moment when he’d come, sharp and sweet into Stranger Number Four’s palm. </p>
<p>“Literally when I was fucking you over the sink, yes,” Stranger Number Four says. He doesn’t sound that offended, for someone who got called the wrong name during sex. </p>
<p>Akira offers, uncertain, “Sorry?”</p>
<p>Stranger Number Four barks out a laugh. “Just thought you should know. In any case, it’s really none of my business who the men I fuck are in love with.”</p>
<p>Why did everyone keep saying that? “That’s not—I’m not—” Akira starts. Stranger Number Four’s already turned away from him, buckling the belt around his waist.</p>
<p>“Like I said, none of my business.” He tosses Akira another look, and it’s something approaching wistful. “Some first-hand advice, though, from someone who’s been there. Shit doesn’t get easier. Not like this.”</p>
<p>“Thanks for the heads up,” Akira bites out. Stranger Number Four simply shrugs off his shortness, and bids Akira goodbye.</p>
<p>The door clicks shut behind him, and Akira is left alone underneath the dark, flickering lights of the bathroom. He didn’t even get his actual name. </p>
<p>When he pieces himself back together again, he leaves Shinjuku earlier than he usually does. He really, really doesn’t want to go home like this, not right now, so he gets off the train at Shibuya. He ends up in a corner booth of Big Bang Burger clutching a small soda close to him, because he spent most of his money on train fare and whiskey shots.</p>
<p>Fuck, his head hurts. Did it hurt like this the other times?</p>
<p>He’s face down on the table, cooling his temples against the condensation of his drink, when he hears a voice call out his name in surprise.</p>
<p>“Akira, is that you?” </p>
<p>He blearily looks up to see Yusuke blinking down at him, a tray piled with copious amounts of food in his arms.</p>
<p>“Yusuke,” Akira stammers out, still not sure if he’s drunk-hallucinating or post-coital-hallucinating. “Why are you here? Why … why did you order this many burgers and fries?”</p>
<p>“They were having an exceptional deal for their Moon Burger combo that only went into effect after midnight,” Yusuke explains. He takes the seat across from Akira. “I’ve been waiting all night, so you can only imagine how hungry I am.”</p>
<p>Akira slowly raises his head as Yusuke gracefully tears open a burger wrapper and inhales it in three neat bites. It reminds Akira distantly of when he would spend hours trying to scarf down each Big Bang Burger challenge while Morgana would watch in abject horror. Seems like Yusuke would be a pro at it—Akira should’ve taken him here before he left.</p>
<p>“I didn’t know you were in town,” Yusuke says, when he’s done with two out of four burgers. He dabs his mouth delicately with a napkin. “Were you just visiting for the day?”</p>
<p><em>“</em>Yeah, it was a friend’s birthday.” He feels more guilty lying to Yusuke than he does his parents, or even Morgana. “Sorry. I should’ve texted.”</p>
<p>“It’s no worry at all,” Yusuke says. He smiles warmly at him, a missed spot of ketchup on his chin. “I’m glad to see you, Akira.” </p>
<p>Akira is overcome with a sudden, overwhelming gratitude that he ran into his friend here after all. </p>
<p>While he nibbles on fries from Yusuke’s tray, Yusuke tells him exuberantly about his newest art project, focused around a more surrealist take on “the trials and tribulations of young adolescence.” He’s going to be featured in Kosei’s student exhibition next month, where other museum curators and art directors like Kawanabe will be scouting for young artists. </p>
<p>“I’ve been painting incessantly, roaming the halls of Kosei for inspiration when I can … I never thought much about it beyond what was necessary, but high school is a fantastic setting for the arduous heartbreak of youth, the dawning of a new self,” Yusuke continues, voice taking on that familiar dreamy air. “So many muses, their stories waiting to be unearthed.”</p>
<p>“Truly,” Akira agrees, and steals another fry. </p>
<p>They eventually make it back outside once they’ve exhausted all of Yusuke’s Moon Burger orders and Yusuke complains about feeling bloated. The chill of the city washes over Akira as the two of them walk through the streets, the emptiness of the night filled up by Yusuke’s fervent rambling and flourishing hand gestures. </p>
<p>“How are you, Akira?” Yusuke asks, once they’ve settled at a bench near the train station. “Forgive me if I’m assuming but … you’ve seemed a little distant, the past few months.”</p>
<p>“I’ve just been adjusting,” Akira replies, that old guilt roiling in his gut again. “Back in my hometown and all. It’s different from Tokyo.”</p>
<p>“Ah, that’s understandable. Futaba also told me that you went on a trip abroad over the summer? Amsterdam, was it?”</p>
<p>
  <em>Futaba, you traitor.</em>
</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Akira says. He makes a mental note to reroute that pre-order of Neo Feathermen back to his address. “It was just for a week or two.” </p>
<p>Yusuke’s eyes widen. “Still, that must’ve been a wondrous time! One of my art professors studied abroad there in university. She told me that the city was an absolute beauty to behold.” </p>
<p>(Was it? When he was in Amsterdam, Akira didn’t spend that much time thinking about what the city had actually looked like. He’d squeezed through tunnels and sped underneath the low arch of bridges with his hands tight around the handlebars of his bike, the wind rumbling in his ears, without ever quite taking in the breath of the living people and places around him.</p>
<p>He remembered the vision that came from only looking forward—the wisps of hair in wind, the flash of a smile. Never kind, never certain; he wouldn’t even call it <em>beautiful.</em></p>
<p>But it was—)</p>
<p>A voice calls out his name, hesitant. </p>
<p>Akira blinks back up at the sound, and he’s brought back to Tokyo. His hands are only slightly shaking this time.</p>
<p>Yusuke is tilting his head at him, his mouth pulled down at the corners. “May I ask again if you’re alright?”</p>
<p>Akira has an answer ready on the tip of his tongue, as he always does, but then he sees Yusuke’s frown deepen. </p>
<p>“Allow me to rephrase,” Yusuke says, quiet. “What can I do for you right now?”</p>
<p>Oh. Akira didn’t think of a response for that. He looks at Yusuke, and then back down to where his hands are flat against the bench.  </p>
<p>“I’m not sure,” Akira whispers, and he’s surprised to find that it comes out honest. “Can you—can you just give me a second?”</p>
<p>“Of course.”</p>
<p>Akira closes his eyes. He doesn’t know what he wants, but he knows he’s tired of feeling like this, like the lump in his throat, swollen from all the words he never lets himself say. He searches for that flicker of honesty from earlier and pulls it towards him, lets it imbue him with something close to courage.</p>
<p>It doesn’t feel like the old skin of Joker, but that’s not who Akira is trying to be right now. </p>
<p>“Akechi is alive,” he finally gets out. Yusuke sucks in a sharp breath next to him.</p>
<p>That’s probably the best place to start, then.</p>
<p>The last few months spill out of him like sludge. Getting Goro’s text messages, spending the first semester sick and hopeful all at once, dropping all of his plans to kiss a dead boy in a foreign city. He talks about Hifumi. He talks about all the retribution Akira knows that he deserves, about how he tries to drown all of it out during nights like this. </p>
<p>He does not talk about the bruises that linger like ghosts on his skin. He does not talk about his dreams. He does not talk about that sun-struck river of hair, that pool of blood in his mouth—how, sometimes, all he wants to do is spend the hazy spaces of his days drowning in the memories.</p>
<p>He does not talk about the things that he does not remember, that he cannot bring himself to imagine again.</p>
<p>Yusuke is looking at him, though, like Akira doesn’t need to say any of that.</p>
<p>“I am sorry,” Yusuke says, slow, purposeful, “that you’ve been in so much pain.”</p>
<p>Akira begins shaking his head, but Yusuke continues with a hand raised, “No, please. I know that you and Akechi were … close. Considerably so. We should’ve checked in with you more in the aftermath of Maruki’s Palace.”</p>
<p>“Honestly, I’m just a wreck,” Akira says. He means for it to be a joke, but it makes Yusuke frown even harder. “Most of it’s my fault anyway.”</p>
<p>“I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. You certainly shouldn’t have treated Togo-san the way you did. It was unkind.”</p>
<p>“I know.” </p>
<p>Yusuke chides, gentler, “But that doesn’t make you an unkind person.”</p>
<p>“Doesn’t it,” Akira spits out before he can stop himself. He looks away.  “I’m not that selfless, Yusuke.”</p>
<p>“Akira,” Yusuke says again, and the forcefulness of his tone makes Akira turn back towards him. </p>
<p>In the entire time of his and Yusuke’s friendship, Yusuke had never learned to dial back the intensity of who he was. When Yusuke looked at you—really <em>looked</em> at you, in the way so many people tended not to—it was hard to focus on anything else.</p>
<p>He is looking at Akira like that now, and his gaze steadies and grounds Akira before he can disappear again. </p>
<p>“You don’t need to be selfless to not want to hurt like this,” Yusuke says, firm. “I’d like to help you in any way I can. You’re my friend, Akira. To do so is no hardship at all to me.”</p>
<p>Yusuke wanted to help Akira, with his eyes shining wide and dark like he meant every word of it. Yusuke, who saw Akira’s hands shaking like they’d never really stopped, and asked him:</p>
<p><em>What can I do for you right now</em>—</p>
<p><em>Help you in any way I can</em>—</p>
<p>Akira leans forward and clumsily pushes his lips against Yusuke’s.</p>
<p>It’s cool, and dry, and profoundly awful, because Akira miscalculates the angle and Yusuke does nothing to fix it. It lasts about three seconds before Yusuke twists his head gently to the side, and Akira realizes what he’s doing. He pulls himself away as if he’s been burned.</p>
<p>Yusuke is staring at him, blank-faced, a single finger pressed to his lips. </p>
<p>Fuck. <em>Fuck. </em>Fuck, fuck, fuck—</p>
<p>“Fuck,” he says, succinct, as he fumbles for the beginnings of an undoubtedly shitty apology. He doesn’t know what possessed him to do that. Yusuke was just <em>there</em>, and <em>good</em>, and it was the kindest thing Akira’d let himself feel since—since—</p>
<p>Before he can stutter anything out, Akira is being swept into the thin skeleton of an embrace, his face pressed against a solid, bony shoulder.</p>
<p>“Sorry, I’m not sure if I’m going about this right,” Yusuke says. His voice is muffled by Akira’s jacket. “Madarame never hugged me as a child, so I’m unused to giving this kind of physical affection.”</p>
<p>Yusuke’s arms are spindled around his abdomen, long and awkward things that don’t quite know what to do with themselves.</p>
<p>“Makes sense,” Akira says, like the words are being summoned from somewhere far outside his body. He unlocks his own arms from where they’re frozen at his side, and hugs Yusuke back, hesitant. </p>
<p>“I’m not quite sure why you felt so inclined to kiss me, but I do feel like this is more what you were looking for, yes?” Yusuke murmurs against him, breath warm on his ear. “Is this enough?”</p>
<p>Akira hears a small, hitching noise from somewhere. It takes him a second to realize it’s coming from himself.</p>
<p>“Yeah,” he chokes out. Yusuke just hums in response, and they stay like that for the next few moments, sitting on that bench, holding each other up. Akira shivers, and he tells himself it’s because the cold is starting to creep into his skin. Yusuke squeezes him harder; he says nothing about the way Akira is dampening the cloth of his coat, the noises he’s burying between them. Akira burrows his face deeper into the divot of Yusuke’s shoulder, and breathes in to fill the rest of the space in his chest.</p>
<p>“Yeah. This is—this is enough.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>—</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>FEBRUARY</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Akira does not return to Shinjuku. There is no Stranger Number Five (at least, for now). He spends his weekends studying like a good student, working part-time at the local bakery. He comes home with sugar and flour dusting his jeans. The owner of the bakery always leaves Akira with loaves of unsold bread that he chews through while painstakingly cramming for entrance exams. </p>
<p>The next time he takes the train to Tokyo, it’s to attend Yusuke’s student exhibition. </p>
<p>Morgana deigns not to come. “I don’t like the smell of paint,” he says primly. And then, eyeing Akira up and down with almost something like relief, he also says, “Seems like it would be an <em>educational </em>trip for a highschool student like yourself. You should go.”</p>
<p>When Akira arrives, Yusuke greets him with one of his delicate hugs—“I’ve been practicing more,” he informs Akira somberly—before he’s swept away into hushed, impassioned conversation by another Kosei student. Akira waves, bemused, as Yusuke tells him to come find him once he’s “taken in the full breadth of beauty in contemplative solitude.”</p>
<p>Left to his contemplative solitude, Akira smoothly side-steps the line of people and makes a quick lap around the museum. He doesn’t linger too long on any one art piece, keeping an eye out for Yusuke’s distinctive flourish amidst the white walls. </p>
<p>He finds Yusuke’s painting hanging on its own panel towards the back. It’s a lot sparser in detail than what Akira remembers of Yusuke’s typical work, lavish strokes of paint now contained to a small, vertical canvas. At first glance, there’s not much to it, no discernible expression—just a dark red background, and a face covered by a hand, sketched out in rough, monotone brushstrokes.</p>
<p>Akira doesn’t know much about art, so he can’t comment on the <em>composition</em>, the <em>quality of light</em>, words he has only heard in passing from Yusuke’s harrowing self-critiques—but he stares and stares at the obscured face, the hand carving itself through the paint, and tries to place the emotion swelling behind his eyes. </p>
<p>He shuffles closer, and his hand unconsciously reaches out to touch it.</p>
<p>“You’re not supposed to touch the artwork,” a soft voice says behind Akira, and his hand recoils sharply back into himself.</p>
<p>Hifumi stands next to him, pretty and poised as ever. There is no ribbon in her hair today. The long strands are parted neatly behind her ear, and from this angle, it makes it easier to see the high arch of her cheekbones, the sharp lines of her face. </p>
<p>“I was wondering if I’d see you here,” Hifumi says, perfectly even. “I remember you and KItagawa-kun being close friends. I imagine he’s the one who invited you.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, I’m here as—er—moral support,” Akira says.</p>
<p>God. He sounds like a fucking idiot.</p>
<p>“How nice of you to finally make the trip down,” Hifumi replies in a drawling tone he hasn’t heard from her before. From anyone else, he would’ve called it snide, but coming from Hifumi, Akira just thinks he deserves it. He knows he deserves it.</p>
<p>In his head, he’s trying to calculate how many different ways he can gracefully dip from the conversation and save them both the pain of his presence, when she brushes past him to sit down on a nearby bench. He stifles his surprise when she gestures for him to join her.</p>
<p>“Oh, I can just—” </p>
<p>“Sit,” Hifumi orders. He blinks. </p>
<p>With just a hint of impatience, she sighs, “Please.”</p>
<p>Akira sits. </p>
<p>Hifumi begins speaking without a second glance at Akira, her gaze directed carefully towards Yusuke’s piece.</p>
<p>“I almost didn’t come today. It’s an optional school event, but I made time to attend because I’ve always been fond of the visual arts, despite not having any talent for them myself.” She twirls a finger around a silky strand of hair, like she always did when she was deep in thought. “And then I saw you come in with Kitagawa-kun, and I wanted to run out as if I was never here at all.”</p>
<p><em>I’m sorry</em>, Akira wants to say, but that wouldn’t do much for either of them. He stays silent, presses his lips tight together. </p>
<p>“My goal was to remain completely indifferent the next time we crossed paths.” Her mouth twists. “I should’ve known it wouldn’t have gone the way I expected. You have a habit of surprising me, even now.” </p>
<p>“I’ve been told that before,” Akira says. “I don’t think that’s a good thing.”</p>
<p>“Perhaps. That particular characteristic <em>did</em> make you an entertaining shogi partner.”</p>
<p>“But not a good one,” he says wryly. “I guess I never really learned how to plan ahead.”</p>
<p>Hifumi frowns. “Shogi has never been about planning ahead. It’s true that strategy goes a long way in securing success, but the crux of learning shogi is just like learning another language. It’s conversational. You speak with every move you make, and you adapt to the rhythm of the other player—their pauses, their patterns. Everyone has a rhythm. All one needs to do is disrupt it.” She pauses, and a familiar blush creeps onto her face. “I’m doing it again, aren’t I?”</p>
<p>“It’s okay,” Akira says, and he means it, just as he has every other time. “I like listening.”</p>
<p>“In any case,” Hifumi goes on, tucking her hair behind her ear, “planning ahead may have been a more useful skill for you to pick up when we were dating. Amongst other things.”</p>
<p>“Yes,” Akira agrees. If he says anything more, he’ll probably fuck it up.</p>
<p>They fall back into silence again, letting the chatter of everyone else hum around them. He thinks he hears Yusuke’s voice somewhere in the distance, rich and deep, charming in the way he never really means it to be. Akira wants to find him and ask him about his painting, to explain why Akira still can’t place his thoughts on it, why he wants to raise a hand to his own face and mirror the ragged angle of the brushstrokes.</p>
<p>Maybe he’s overthinking it. He does like the red, after all.</p>
<p>“What do you think of Yusuke’s piece?” he asks Hifumi instead.</p>
<p>For whatever reason, she tears her eyes away from the actual painting to look back at him, curiously.</p>
<p>“I’m not incredibly well-versed in artistic criticism,” she muses. “But I do believe it hints at the themes Kitagawa-kun wanted to convey. Heartache, self-identity. The pains of youth, in his own words. It seems fitting, considering the age we’re in. Graduation is just around the corner.”</p>
<p>“Are you ready for that?” he says, and his voice comes out rough. “Graduation, I mean. All of it.”</p>
<p>“As ready as I can allow myself to feel,” Hifumi says. “And you?”</p>
<p>Akira stares at the whorls of grey and black, coalescing into the facsimile of a face. He cinches his hands tight at his sides, because Hifumi said he wasn’t allowed to touch the art.</p>
<p>“Somewhere along the way,” Akira hears himself say, “I feel like I may have overestimated myself.”</p>
<p>He doesn’t know what the fuck he actually means as the words leave his mouth, but Hifumi seems to understand well enough to respond.</p>
<p>“Perhaps you forgot yourself,” she offers. “Even the greatest of gamblers find themselves faltering when they misinterpret the nature of the games they play.”</p>
<p>“A game,” Akira echoes. “What do you mean?”</p>
<p>“I viewed the world through shogi for the longest of times,” Hifumi says. She sounds distant, like Yusuke talking about his art, like Haru quietly discussing the merits of certain soil concentrations. This was her time to speak, and so Akira listened. “It sounds a bit ridiculous, but it’s easier to understand the complexities of life through this illusion of rules, of knowing when to entertain it and when to not. If I simply maneuvered myself this way, I could please both my father and mother, but I would remain unhappy. If I moved myself the other way, I could find some measure of happiness, but risk harming my relationship with them. If I forgave you for what you did, or if I despised you for the rest of my life—well. I couldn’t simulate a scenario that satisfied me either way. Every time I thought about it, the calculated losses felt too great.”</p>
<p>Akira watches Hifumi whirl that curtain of hair tighter and tighter around her finger. It shines black in the light.</p>
<p>“I’m not certain if I’m building up to any monumental revelation,” Hifumi continues, in that same silk voice, “but I do know that I was able to find my first glimmer of peace with the future when I realized I could stop playing the game whenever I wanted to. My life was worth more than some petty ideas around winning or losing. I didn’t care about that. I just … I just felt like choosing, without having to think about any of it.”</p>
<p><em>To be free</em>—<em>to choose</em>—</p>
<p><em>My life belongs to me now</em>—<em>it’s </em>mine—</p>
<p>“And is it better now?” Akira asks, suddenly light-headed. No, not quite—just light. “Not playing the game?”</p>
<p>“I’d rather reserve the mindset for shogi,” she says, dry, and it makes Akira’s mouth quirk up at the corners. “But yes. Of course it’s better.”</p>
<p>The surety with which she says it, that spine of exquisite steel lining her posture—</p>
<p>Not for the first time, Akira thinks Togo Hifumi would’ve made a lovely Phantom Thief.</p>
<p>“Why did you want to talk to me?” he blurts out, and then winces. “I don’t mean that rudely. I just thought you’d never want to be near me ever again, especially after what I did.”</p>
<p>“I’m not sure.” She smiles. “I suppose this was a risk I decided to undertake on my own.”</p>
<p>They sit like that together, side-by-side, carefully distanced from one another. Eventually, Hifumi rises, and peers down at him.</p>
<p>“This was an interesting conversation, but I don’t imagine we’ll see each other for a while,” she says, and then bows, as she would when ending a match. “Goodbye, Akira. Please don’t try to contact me, at least for the foreseeable future.”</p>
<p>She leaves. Akira does not watch her go this time. He does not need to.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>—</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>(7:12 PM) </strong>— <strong>11 FEBRUARY</strong></p>
<p><strong>Yusuke: </strong>Akira! Where are you? They are serving lobster rolls in the reception area.<strong><br/>Yusuke: </strong>I have already obtained 5 of them. Please come. I cannot carry all of these by myself.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>—</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>MARCH</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>On a cloudy March day, Akira graduates. He rolls the lint and cat hair off his graduation gown. When he walks across the stage to bow and accept his diploma, his steps are as quiet as the air. Takeshita knocks fists with him when they pass by each other after the ceremony. </p>
<p>His parents are there for once, but he only has eyes for Futaba and Sojiro, who piled into Sojiro’s shitty Sedan and drove all the way up to his little high school. Futaba says that Sojiro cried when Akira’s name was called, but he adamantly denies it. </p>
<p>“You did good, kid,” Sojiro tells him, hand heavy on his shoulder. His voice is gruff with every emotion he clumsily tries to hide away. He was never as good at it as Akira was; it makes Akira smile, still, and clutch Sojiro’s hand back.</p>
<p>“I couldn’t have done any of this without your support,” he says sincerely, and he smothers a laugh at how Sojiro’s eyes shine, for the briefest of seconds. </p>
<p>Futaba takes photos in the background, serenely, and sends them to Akira after.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>—</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>(4:20 PM) </strong>— <strong>24 MARCH</strong></p>
<p><strong>Ryuji: </strong>EFF YEAH WE GRADUATED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!<br/><strong>Ann: </strong>🥳🥳🥳  hell yeah we did!!<strong><br/>Yusuke: </strong>🦀 Yes, this calls for a feast! 🦞 <br/><strong>Akira: </strong>[...] <br/><strong>Akira: </strong>congrats everyone<br/><strong>Akira: </strong>thanks for being my friends, through all of this<br/><strong>Akira: </strong>i love you all <br/><strong>Ryuji: </strong>wh <br/><strong>Ryuji: </strong>bro ckmon<br/><strong>Ryuji:</strong> dont make me cry over text. at least wait 2 CALL<br/><strong>Akira: </strong><strong>❤️</strong></p>
<p> </p>
<p>—</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>APRIL </strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>When all is said and done, Akira returns back to Tokyo. He is not alone this time. </p>
<p>He moves into a little apartment a few blocks away from his university. He takes one room while Yusuke takes the other. They hunt for furniture online together, and Akira patiently explains to Yusuke the benefits of purchasing an actual mattress over vintage lava lamps from the 80s.</p>
<p>“The colors—” Yusuke bemoans, and Akira tells him no. He adds extra pillows and blankets to their joint shopping cart for good measure. </p>
<p>Yusuke and Akira host a small housewarming party when they move in. It’s mainly just the Phantom Thieves, or at least those who are still in Tokyo, all of them cramped into the square space of their kitchen. Haru and Akira make a cake. Sojiro stops by with four containers of curry and a thermos filled with coffee. They finish the first container by the end of the night. Sae Nijima surprisingly makes an appearance early on to give them her well wishes, and leaves before anyone else arrives. </p>
<p>They fill their apartment with Yusuke’s paintings, Akira’s odd little souvenirs, large-leafed plants that Yusuke buys on a whim but Akira ends up having to take care of. Akira cooks and bakes in their kitchen and never learns how to make a portion size just for one, but Yusuke is ravenous enough for the both of them. Futaba and Sumire sometimes stop by after class (or in Sumire’s case, gymnastics practice), usually to raid their fridge for leftovers, or to kidnap Morgana. Akira picks out classes for his first semester as Ryuji and Yusuke elbow each other and play Mario Kart in their small living room.</p>
<p>“So do you know what you wanna do, dude?” Ryuji asks, through a fistful of potato chips. “Like, major-wise?”</p>
<p>“Nope,” Akira says.  “I’ll figure it out.”</p>
<p>“Cool, cool. You wanna sub in next round?”</p>
<p>It’s been a year since Maruki’s Palace, since the dissolution of the Metaverse—almost two years since a God arbitrarily decided to leave the fate of human autonomy to Akira and his band of superpowered teenagers. </p>
<p>(Akira doesn’t know how long it’s been since shrugging off Joker’s skin, since trying to settle into his own. He doesn’t know if he’s even—<em>done</em>, doing what he needs to do. He doesn’t think it’ll ever stop.)</p>
<p>But one day, he finds himself staring down at the blank screen of his phone. There is no God trying to suck Akira into another world; there are no messages from a boy who should be dead. There is just Akira, alone, his hands heavy with all the things that he could do.</p>
<p>Akira stares down at his phone, and he decides to stop waiting.</p>
<p>He scrolls through his contacts. Selects a name. He hovers a single thumb over that familiar scramble of letters, and clicks <em>Call</em>.</p>
<p>The phone picks up after three rings.</p>
<p>“Yes?” the voice—the right one, this time—says, as haughty as Akira remembers it being. </p>
<p>Months ago, the sound of it would’ve knocked the breath out of his lungs. Now, he manages to trap that exhale just between the spaces of his throat and chest, and holds its ghost there until it’s the only thing he can feel.</p>
<p>“Before you hang up on me,” Akira begins, steady, “I want you to know that you don’t need to say anything. Just if—if you’re willing to hear me out right now, you can stay on the call and not say a single word. I won’t take long. But if you don’t want to, then hang up, and you’ll never hear from me again. I swear it.”</p>
<p>There is a long pause, and then finally, after his head has gone quiet from the static crackling in his ear, a simple, “Okay.” </p>
<p>“Okay,” Akira says. He nods. He thinks. “Okay.”</p>
<p>Akira breathes out, slow, even, and says:</p>
<p>(<em>I should’ve said this when I saw you in Amsterdam, or when I was on the plane ride, or hell—maybe before then. Maybe I already knew. Maybe I didn’t have a name for it then, or I didn’t want to name it. I don’t even know if I can now but—God—fuck.</em></p>
<p>
  <em>Okay. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Okay. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>You asked me once, why I came to Amsterdam, and I never answered because the answer was too simple. I came for you. I came for you, because when I was seventeen, I thought you were the most interesting person I’d ever met, and then somewhere down the line, I realized I was in love with you.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>I fell in love with you because you never said what you meant. You smiled when you were angry, and never when you were happy. You were bafflingly good at old arcade games, but I knew you’d never picked up a Wii controller in your life. You could never hide your temper for shit. You took your coffee sweet. You were my friend, my rival, and the same hand you used to shake my hand when we first met was the same hand you used to shoot a bullet into my brain.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Not technically, I know. But it’s the thought that counts.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>I’m going to love you for the rest of my life because that’s what I think love does—it gets under your skin, alters something in your DNA so it’s just coded into you like muscle memory, like a second self. It’s something that stays with you, even when you don’t know why.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>I’m happy that I got to love you when you were the shining Detective Prince; that I got to love you when you were the killer tracing my steps; that I got to love you when you were alive, in a life you chose for yourself, because out of anyone I know, you deserve a life worth choosing.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>I don’t need you to say it back. I don’t need you to say anything.</em>
</p>
<p><em>I just want you to know—</em>)</p>
<p>“I’m grateful to you, Goro.”</p>
<p>The pause lasts longer this time. Akira is the calmest he’s been in months.</p>
<p>“Is that—is that all you wanted to say?” he eventually hears, the words more breath than voice.</p>
<p>“I tried to be as succinct as possible,” Akira says.</p>
<p>“What do you—what could you possibly be <em>grateful</em> for—”</p>
<p>“You,” Akira says. The breath is gone. “I’m grateful for you. To you. I never got to tell you. That’s all.”</p>
<p>“That’s all you have to say after I—” A sharp exhale. “No. Never mind.”</p>
<p>A longer pause. Akira waits, lets the phone rest gently against his ear.</p>
<p>“Okay.” The voice is, if not soft—never soft—then quiet. “Okay. I understand.”</p>
<p>“I’m glad,” Akira says. “I won’t bother you again after this.”</p>
<p>“Oh,” the voice says, abrupt, like it didn’t mean to say that. A cough. “Alright then.”</p>
<p>“Alright,” Akira says.</p>
<p>The silence stretches on and on until Akira thinks that he’s been hung up on, and then static sputters back into the call. </p>
<p>“Goodbye, Akira,” Goro says. </p>
<p>“Goodbye,” Akira repeats. “Thank you, Goro.”</p>
<p>He ends the call himself. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>—</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Akira breathes out, and wills himself to believe:</p>
<p>
  <em>It’s enough. It’s enough. It’s enough.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>—</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He thinks:</p>
<p>
  <em>It is. It is. It is.</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. coda: tokyo</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>
  <em>I'm just playing games</em>
  <br/>
  <em>I know that's plastic love</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Dance to the plastic beat</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Another morning comes</em>
</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>—</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>
    <em>2 YEARS LATER</em>
  </strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>—</p>
<p> </p>
<p>When all is said and done, Goro finds himself on a plane back to Tokyo. He is alone, but that’s fine. He has learned to distinguish the feeling from loneliness.</p>
<p>Mila doesn’t cry when he leaves, but she gives him one of her firm, full-bodied hugs that Goro sinks himself into. He and Sven have lost contact with each other by the time his work tenure in Amsterdam expires, but he makes one last stop by the cafe, takes his cup of coffee to go. On his last night in Amsterdam, Goro rides his bike out and makes laps around the city until his skin aches from the cold.</p>
<p>When he arrives, he only plans to stay for the day. It’s his final stop before his work agency spirits him off to another country (Taiwan, this time), and he’ll be traveling the world again from one home to the next. Goro comes back to Tokyo to pay homage to his first. To his mother’s only one.</p>
<p>He visits the places where he last remembered her alive, breathing, almost happy. The park where she taught him how to ride a bike, the old toy store where she bought him his first Neo Featherman figures, the diner where she would sit down with him and rest her head as he babbled on and on about his day. It’s something like selfishness, something like defiance. </p>
<p>He does not visit her grave. He has long stopped thinking about his own. </p>
<p>When the day is drawing to a close, Goro decides to make one last stop in Kichijoji. His mother never took him here herself, but he spent most of his time in the district’s music bars listening to her favorite music, trying to shape the memory of her soft, tired voice into the singer’s lilt. Some part of her lives here, and so Goro goes to find it.</p>
<p>Tonight, the streets thrum with old 80s music, filtering in through every corner. He finds himself walking in the direction of <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/2P3tU2cxnvc7dJylk2VVgr?si=mCBgrWNCRqm3jkQ6dVIBQg">one song</a> before he realizes what he’s doing, and his stride becomes purposeful when he does. It doesn’t sound like the scratch of a record player, or the crackle of a radio—it sounds like the low throatiness of a live performance, of piano chords carried by the air—</p>
<p>When he turns the corner, Goro meets him there, nearly colliding into him.</p>
<p>Goro knows it’s him because his hair’s <em>still</em> a fucking mess, after all this time.</p>
<p>Before he can do anything—run, hide, evaporate in the middle of the street—Akira raises his head and meets Goro’s eyes in the same flash of instant recognition.</p>
<p>
  <em>Shit.</em>
</p>
<p>They both stop in place, jumping several feet away from each other. The singer is still sitting and crooning softly on the patio of a bar, throngs of other people circled around her to watch. But as always, <em>as fucking always</em>, Goro can’t tear his eyes from Akira.</p>
<p>At first glance, Akira looks just as Goro last saw him—scruffy, skinny, dark eyes framed by darker lashes. And then he draws closer again, and Goro can see the features that aren’t imprinted upon his memories: the defined line of his jaw, his figure more slender than skinny now, every angle of him sharper and just lingering on dangerous, even without Joker’s mask on him.</p>
<p>Akira is his height now, those two flimsy centimeters of space gone.</p>
<p>“You’re here,” Akira says, wondrous.</p>
<p>His voice, at least, is the same. Goro fights down every instinct in his body to not react to that pang of familiarity.</p>
<p>“And so are you,” Goro says, careful. “Funny how fate works like that.”</p>
<p>Akira just stands there, not replying. Goro stares back, because he refuses to let himself run away now.</p>
<p>“I didn’t know you were here,” Akira says suddenly. Goro narrows his eyes—that sounded like an <em>accusation</em>—but then Akira continues, waving a hand in the air, “I really just liked the song.”</p>
<p>“Oh,” Goro says. He swallows. “I did, too.”</p>
<p>“Are you here for long?”</p>
<p>“Just the day,” Goro replies. “I fly out tomorrow morning.”</p>
<p>His teeth clench and ache with how polite they’re both being. </p>
<p>Akira just nods, and turns his head to look back at the singer. Goro tries to do the same, but his gaze keeps landing on Akira, his face soft underneath the streetlights.</p>
<p>After a few moments, he hears clapping in the background. The singer must’ve finished her set. </p>
<p>Akira pierces the silence between them, his voice clearer now that the hum of music has stopped.</p>
<p>“I can go.”</p>
<p>Goro blinks, refocusing his eyes back on him. “What?” </p>
<p>“I can go,” Akira repeats calmly. “I told you I wouldn’t bother you anymore, and so I won’t. You should—you should enjoy yourself, for however long you’re here.”</p>
<p>Akira is already moving away from him, ready to fall away from Goro’s life as easily as he’d ended that phone call, as easily as Goro had shoved him out the first time. And the truth of it is that, if Akira did leave now, he would be fine. Goro has grown accustomed to the absence of Kurusu Akira. He had forced himself to until it became a fucking natural fact of life, not getting to see Kurusu Akira, not being able to touch him in all the ways he once dreamt about, he once feared. For years, Goro’s life has belonged to himself alone.</p>
<p>So he would be okay—if Akira walked away, right here, right now. Goro would be fine, as he had been for the last two years, trying to grow his life beyond the spectre of ghosts.</p>
<p>The Kurusu Akira before him is not a ghost. His wrist is warm and real and solid when Goro reaches out a hand to grab it.</p>
<p>Akira stills at the contact, and turns back towards him.</p>
<p>“Goro,” he begins, in that same wondrous tone. His blood beats hard underneath Goro’s grip.</p>
<p>Goro holds his gaze. It was easier, now that their eyeline was at the same level. </p>
<p>“Taiwan, this time,” he says. “Taipei. You’ll find me there.”</p>
<p>Akira’s mouth quirks up. “You won’t even give me an address this time?”</p>
<p>“You managed well enough last time,” he drawls. “Surprise me.”</p>
<p>“Is that an order?”</p>
<p>Goro lets go of his wrist. His arm falls back to his side, but Akira keeps his gaze locked with his. </p>
<p>“It can be whatever you want it to be,” Goro says, low. “Your choice, Akira.” </p>
<p>Akira stares at him.</p>
<p>“Well,” Akira says, “when you say it like that.”</p>
<p>He begins moving away again, but this time, he tosses a small, secretive smile over his shoulder. The sight of it makes Goro freeze, just like he did the very first time he saw it. </p>
<p>Akira leaves without another word, his shadow disappearing further and further into the crowd. Goro stays there, watches him go. The city is humming and thriving around him. The ground is steady. His hand is warm.</p>
<p>He is—</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>—</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>(He shows up on his doorstep one month later. </p>
<p>“Hello again,” Akira says.</p>
<p>“About fucking time,” Goro says.</p>
<p>His hand is still warm when he pulls Akira towards him.)</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>—</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p><em>Alive, alive, alive</em>—</p>
<p><br/>
<br/>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>a big, loving, effusive, etc. thank you to my irl friend for patiently sitting through all of my keyboard scrambles, for listening to me complain for weeks on end about the Process, for editing and proofreading all 30k+ of this despite still never playing persona 5. i may owe you my life.</p>
<p>another thank you to anyone else who has ever taken the time to read, leave a kudos, write a comment, or hit me up on twitter. your support has meant so much, and i'm glad i got to finish this story the way that i wanted to. see you next time!</p>
<p>come find me on <a href="https://twitter.com/span1shsahara"><strong>twitter</strong></a>!</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>as always, please leave a comment or kudos if you enjoyed.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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